Journal of Medieval Military History. Volume XIV [14] 1783271302, 9781783271306

Table of contents :
1. Anglo-Norman Artillery in Narrative Histories, from the Reign of William I to the Minority of Henry III / Michael S. Fulton 1
2. Imperial Policy and Military Practice in the Plantagenet Dominions, c. 1337 – c. 1453 / David Green 33
3. The Parliament of the Crown of Aragon as Military Financier in the War of the Two Pedros / Donald J. Kagay 57
4. Chasing the Chimera in Spain: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82 / Douglas Biggs 79
5. Note: A Medieval City under Threat Turns Its Coat, while Hedging Its Bets – Burgos Faces an Invasion in Spring 1366 / L. J. Andrew Villalon 99
Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval Warfare
6. Medieval European Mercenaries in North Africa: The Value of Difference / Michael Lower 105
7. Medieval Irregular Warfare, c. 1000–1300 / John France 123
8. Muslim Responses to Western Intervention: A Comparative Study of the Crusades and Post-2003 Iraq / Alex Mallett 133
9. “New Wars” and Medieval Warfare: Some Terminological Considerations / Jochen G. Schenk 149
10. Friend or Foe? The Catalan Company as Proxy Actors in the Aegean and Asia Minor Vacuum / Mike Carr 163
List of Contributors 179

Citation preview

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CONTENTS Michael S. Fulton David Green Donald J. Kagay Douglas Biggs L. J. Andrew Villalon

Anglo-Norman Artillery in Narrative Histories, from the Reign of William I to the Minority of Henry III Imperial Policy and Military Practice in the Plantagenet Dominions, c.1337–c.1453 The Parliament of the Crown of Aragon as Military Financier in the War of the Two Pedros Chasing the Chimera in Spain: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82 Note: A Medieval City under Threat Turns Its Coat, while Hedging Its Bets – Burgos Faces an Invasion in Spring 1366 Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval Warfare*

Michael Lower John France Alex Mallett

Jochen G. Schenk Mike Carr

Medieval European Mercenaries in North Africa: The Value of Difference Medieval Irregular Warfare, c.1000–1300 Muslim Responses to Western Intervention: A Comparative Study of the Crusades and Post-2003 Iraq “New Wars” and Medieval Warfare: Some Terminological Considerations Friend or Foe? The Catalan Company as Proxy Actors in the Aegean and Asia Minor Vacuum

* The second section of this volume comprises a set of articles based on papers presented in 2015 at a workshop organized by the University of Glasgow on “Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval and Early-Modern Warfare.” This was part of a series of workshops funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the topic of “Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces: The Past and Future of Warfare.”

FRANCE, DEVRIES, ROGERS (editors)

Cover: Coll. Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry, MS13, fo. 105r (circa 1170–1190). The Italian artist who illuminated this copy of Gratian’s Decretum beautifully captured the deadly seriousness of medieval warfare – for townsmen as well as knights. Image used by generous permission of the Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry.

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY VIII JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

The Journal’s hallmark is broad chronological, geographic and thematic coverage of the subject, bearing witness to ‘the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterises the field’.  HISTORY

XIV

J ournal of

MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

·  X IV · Edited by JOHN FRANCE, KELLY DEVRIES and CLIFFORD J. ROGERS

JOURNAL OF

Medieval Military History Volume XIV

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

Editors Clifford J. Rogers Kelly DeVries John France ISSN 1477-545X

The Journal, an annual publication of De re militari: The Society for Medieval Military History, covers medieval warfare in the broadest possible terms, both chronologically and thematically. It aims to encompass topics ranging from traditional studies of the strategic and tactical conduct of war, to explorations of the martial aspects of chivalric culture and mentalité, examinations of the development of military technology, and prosopographical treatments of the composition of medieval armies. Editions of previously unpublished documents of significance to the field are included. The Journal also seeks to foster debate on key disputed aspects of medieval military history. The editors welcome submissions to the Journal, which should be formatted in accordance with the style-sheet provided on De re militari’s website (www. deremilitari.org), and sent electronically to the editor specified there.

JOURNAL OF

Medieval Military History Volume XIV Edited by JOHN FRANCE KELLY DEVRIES CLIFFORD J. ROGERS

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2016 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2016 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978-1-78327-130-6

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

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The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Contents

1.

Anglo-Norman Artillery in Narrative Histories, from the Reign of William I to the Minority of Henry III Michael S. Fulton

1

2.

Imperial Policy and Military Practice in the Plantagenet Dominions, c. 1337–c. 1453 David Green

33

3.

The Parliament of the Crown of Aragon as Military Financier in the War of the Two Pedros Donald J. Kagay

57

4.

Chasing the Chimera in Spain: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82 Douglas Biggs

79

5.

Note: A Medieval City under Threat Turns Its Coat, while Hedging Its Bets – Burgos Faces an Invasion in Spring 1366 L. J. Andrew Villalon

99

Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval Warfare* 6.

Medieval European Mercenaries in North Africa: The Value of Difference Michael Lower

105

7.

Medieval Irregular Warfare, c. 1000–1300 John France

123

8.

Muslim Responses to Western Intervention: A Comparative Study of the Crusades and Post-2003 Iraq Alex Mallett

133

9.

“New Wars” and Medieval Warfare: Some Terminological Considerations Jochen G. Schenk

149

Contents

vi

10. Friend or Foe? The Catalan Company as Proxy Actors in the Aegean and Asia Minor Vacuum Mike Carr

163

List of Contributors

179

*

The second section of this volume comprises a set of articles based on papers presented in 2015 at a workshop organized by the University of Glasgow on “Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval and Early-Modern Warfare.” This was part of a series of workshops funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the topic of “Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces: The Past and Future of Warfare.”

1 Anglo-Norman Artillery in Narrative Histories, from the Reign of William I to the Minority of Henry III Michael S. Fulton

Between the Norman conquest of England and the minority of Henry III there is a significant transition in the way that artillery is dealt with by narrative sources.1 References to these engines are initially quite vague but become more specific from the second half of the twelfth century. The most detailed descriptions of artillery, however, are found in accounts of the crusades, often composed by eyewitnesses or figures closer to events than their European contemporaries. This study aims to reveal how artillery was employed by and against Anglo-Norman forces between 1066 and 1226, before it became a fixture in English administrative records. The development of these engines will be traced by analysing contemporary descriptions and the terminology used by various sources on a case-by-case basis. The vivid descriptions of the engines employed by Anglo-Norman crusaders will be used as markers of development, allowing evidence from Europe to be evaluated in between these contextual waypoints. It becomes clear quite quickly how broadly this technology was appreciated, how the constant interactions of various armies ensured that knowledge was continually circulating, and how the perceived value of artillery increased with time. To begin, “artillery” will be used to refer to stone-throwing mechanical siege engines. It is widely accepted that swing-beam, or trebuchet, artillery was the predominant form of artillery in Europe during the High Middle Ages. These engines were composed of a main beam rotating around a horizontal off-centre axle and functioned according to the principle of mechanical advantage: force was applied at the end of the short arm of the beam, leading the end of the long arm to move at a greater rate. To increase efficiency, a sling was attached at the end of the long arm, forcing the projectile couched within to travel even farther, and thus faster, before release. Originally, the powering force was provided by teams of men pulling ropes fixed to the short end of the beam. These traction trebuchets were later complemented by heavier counterweight trebuchets, which

1

I would like to thank David Bachrach for reading an earlier draft of this paper. Although we disagree over whether classical torsion stone-throwers were used during this period, his thoughts on the matter were helpful. For the historiography of this debate, see n. 3 below.

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used the gravitational force acting upon a large mass fixed to the end of the short arm as an alternative power source. Trebuchet technology appears to have originated in China, reaching the Arab world by the seventh century and Latin Europe by the ninth.2 It is unclear how long classical torsion engines remained in use in certain areas, but it can be asserted with reasonable certainty that traction trebuchets had completely replaced classical torsion artillery in Western Europe by the end of the Early Middle Ages.3 Although there is limited evidence to conclusively prove what type of artillery was used between the sixth and tenth centuries, there is neither archaeological nor illustrative evidence, and few textual suggestions, to indicate that torsion siege weapons were used anywhere in Latin Europe from the eleventh century to the thirteenth. Although most textual references to artillery tend to be vague, illustrative evidence confirms that knowledge of trebuchet technology was widespread.4 By comparison, there does not appear to be any

2

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4

For the Chinese origin of these engines and theories regarding their westward migration, see Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Études sur le passé et l’avenir de l’artillerie, 6 vols. (Paris, 1848–71), 2:35; Rudolf Schneider, Die Artillerie des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1910), pp. 53–54; Kalervo Huuri, Zur Geschichte des Mittelalterlichen Geschutzwesens aus Orientalischen Quellen, Studia Orientalia 9.3 (Helsinki, 1941), 56–65, 212–27; Ferdiand Lot, L’art militaire et les armées au Moyen Age en Europe et dans le Proche Orient, vol. 1 (Paris, 1946), pp. 221–22; Donald Hill, “Trebuchets,” Viator 4 (1973), 99–114, at pp. 100–03; Joseph Needham, “China’s Trebuchets, Manned and Counterweighted,” in On Pre-Modern Technology and Science, ed. Bert S. Hall and Delno C. West (Malibu, 1976), pp. 107–45; Carroll Gillmor, “The Introduction of the Traction Trebuchet into the Latin West,” Viator 12 (1981), 1–8; Speros Vryonis Jr., “The Evolution of Slavic Society and the Slavic Invasion in Greece, The First Major Slavic Attack on Thessaloniki, A.D. 597,” The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens 50.4 (1981), 378–90; A. W. Lawrence, “A Skeletal History of Byzantine Fortification,” The Annual of the British School at Athens 78 (1983), 171–227, at p. 222 and n. 137; John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (Ithaca, 1999), p. 119; Paul E. Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet: A Study in Cultural Diffusion,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000), 71–116; Peter Purton, The Early Medieval Siege c. 450–1200 (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 29–83; Paul E. Chevedden, “King James I the Conqueror and the Artillery Revolution of the Middle Ages,” in Jaume I: Commemorció del VIII centenari del naixement de Jaume I, ed. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona, 2011) 313–39 at pp. 315–16. For checks to those theories that emphasise Byzantine and Slavic transmission, cf. Eric McGeer, “Byzantine Siege Warfare in Theory and Practice,” in The Medieval City Under Siege, ed. Ivy A. Corfis and Michael Wolfe (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 123–29 and Panayotis Yannopoulos, “La penetration slave en Argolide ,” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, Études argiennes 6 (1980), 323–72 respectively. For overviews of the historiographical debate concerning the continued use or replacement of classical torsion engines, see Randal Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1992), Appendix 3, pp. 254–73; Paul E. Chevedden, “Artillery in Late Antiquity: Prelude to the Middle Ages,” in The Medieval City Under Siege, ed. Ivy A. Corfis and Michael Wolfe (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 131–73. Contemporary illustrations include those found in Beatus of Liebana, Commentary on the Apocalypse, c. 1100–25, Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino, MS I.II.1, fol. 109r; Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augusti, c. 1196, Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS Cod. 120 II, fols. 96r, 97r, 98r, 104r, 108r, 109r, 111r, 132r; Skylitzes Chronicle, 12th–13th

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illustrative evidence from Western Europe to support the use of torsion artillery between the eleventh century and the thirteenth.5 Terminology The terminology used by contemporaries to identify artillery is the most significant issue confronting any attempt to discern what types of artillery were employed in Latin Europe. Variants of the term “trebuchet,” including trebuchetum/tribucluetta/tribok/trabocco, do not appear before the late twelfth century.6 While this term is frequently used by modern scholars to identify the broader family of swing-beam engines, English and northern French sources appear to have used its variants to identify counterweight trebuchets in the early thirteenth century.7 Most terms used to identify artillery are much more ambiguous. Classical terms such as tormentum (lat.) and manganum (lat.)/ mangonel (fr.) were often used, as was petraria (lat.)/perrier (fr.), dating to the Early Middle Ages. Even catapulta (lat.) and balista (lat.) were used at times to describe medieval stone-throwing engines.8 The continued use of classical terms has divided scholars over whether such labels were used to denote the same

5

6

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centuries, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MSS Graecus Vitr. 26-2 Cod. Graecus Matrirensis Ionnis Skylitzes, fols. 151r, 166r, 169r. The earliest medieval drawing that I have found of what appears to be a one-armed torsion catapult is in Walter of Milemete, De nobilitatibus, sapientiis et prudentiis regum, c. 1326, Oxford, Christ Church College Library, MS 92, fol. 78v. The engine is oddly and impractically shaped, suggesting that the illustrator may have made use of a classical description, but incorporated a throwing arm more like that of a trebuchet. For a counterweight trebuchet drawn by the same illustrator, see fol. 67r. Another illustration of what might be a torsion engine can be found in Historia de Proeliis (La vraie ystoire dou bon roi Alixandre), c. 1340, London, British Library, Royal D I, fol. 111r. As no twisted coil is visible and the axle is elevated, the illuminator may have meant this to be a trebuchet. The earliest uses appear to be as trabuchellus (1189) and trabuchis (1199). Both are included in lists with other traditional terms for artillery. For the former, see Giambattista Verci, Storia degli Exelini, ed. C. Firmian, 3 vols. (Brassano, 1779), 3:97, quoted in Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet,” p. 99. For the latter, see Annales Placentini Guelfi, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 18 (Hanover, 1863, reprinted Leipzig, 1925), p. 420. See also, Michael S. Fulton, “The Diffusion of Artillery Terminology in the Early Thirteenth Century: The Case of Henry of Livonia,” SHARE: Studies in History, Archaeology, Religion and Conservation 3 (2016) 1–27 at p. 4; France, Western Warfare, pp. 121–23; Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet,” p. 91; Huuri, Zur Geschichte des Mittelalterlichen Geschutzwesens, p. 171; D. J. Cathcart King, “The Trebuchet and other Siege-Engines,” Château Gaillard 9–10 (1982), 457–69, at p. 461. John France has astutely noted that the earliest known uses of this term do not appear to have referred to particularly impressive engines, no more exceptional than other stone-throwers identified by traditional terms, France, Western Warfare, pp. 121–23. By the 1230s, however, the term is applied with surprising universality to only the most impressive engines at a given siege, see Fulton, “The Diffusion of Artillery Terminology.” These two terms had been used to denote bolt-throwing engines at certain points in antiquity. The former was most often used to identify a stone-thrower during the Middle Ages, while the latter progressively came to refer to a crossbow or other type of bolt-shooting weapon.

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types of engines as had been used in antiquity or whether they had been adapted to describe newer types of engines.9 Most of the men who recorded the surviving descriptions of artillery from this period were clerics and few had much practical experience with poliorcetics. Some drew heavily from classical sources in order to convey a sense of imagery to an audience that would have been acquainted with the same classical texts.10 While some used antiquated terminology to describe contemporary engines, others used contemporary terms to describe earlier engines. For example, Roger of Wendover notes the use of trubuculi at certain sieges of the First Crusade, almost a century before the first known use of this term.11 Some scholars have attempted to impose strict terminological guidelines, claiming that certain terms consistently identified specific types of engines.12 However, there is very little to suggest that such universal and absolute guidelines were employed by the sources. Many medieval authors used various terms interchangeably: Paul the Deacon openly equated petraria with mangold in his eighth-century account of a seventh-century siege, while William of Tyre similarly equated manganum and petraria in his late twelfth-century account of the siege of

9

10

11

12

For example, Abbo mentions catapultae, mangana and balistae at various points in his eyewitness account of the ninth-century siege of Paris, interpreted by Charles Oman as torsion weapons and by Rudolph Schneider as swing-beam engines. Abbo, Bella Parisiacae urbis, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS Rer. Germ. 1 (Hanover, 1871), for mangana: 1 l. 364, p. 18; for variants of catapulta 1. ll. 157, 236, 535; 2. ll. 238, 252 385, pp. 11, 14, 23, 34, 39; for balista 1. l. 87, p. 9; 2. l. 242, p. 34; Charles William Chadwick Oman, A History of the Art of War: The Middle Ages from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century (London, 1889), pp. 141–48; Schneider, Die Artillerie des Mittelalters, pp. 53–54, 60–61. For suggestions by modern historians that classical torsion artillery remained in use during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 259; Christopher Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 213; David Bachrach, “English Artillery 1189–1307: The Implications of Terminology,” English Historical Review 121.494 (2006), 1408–30. Cf. Gustav Köhler, Die Entwickelung des Kriegswesens und der Kriegführung in der Ritterzeit von Mitte des II. Jahrhunderts bis zu den Hussitenkriegen, 3 vols. (Breslau, 1886–89), 2:139–221; Oman, A History of the Art of War, p. 543. An obvious classical influence can be found in Otto of Freising and Rahewin, Gesta Friderici I, Imperatoris, ed. R. G. Waitz, MGH SS Rer. Germ. 46, 3rd ed. (Hanover and Leipzig, 1912). See also Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 127–28; J. F. Fino, “Machines de jet médiévales,” Gladius 10 (1972), 25–43, at p. 25. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Henry Coxe, 4 vols. (London, 1841–44), 2:93, 135, 137. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 57, 7 vols. (London, 1872–83), 2:68, 96, 97–98. For the earliest known use of a variant of this term, see n. 6 above. For attempts to impose guidelines on the terminology used in Western Europe, see Köhler, Die Entwickelung des Kriegswesens, 3:154–59, 164–66; Huuri, Zur Geschichte des Mittelalterlichen Geschutzwesens, pp. 57–65; King, “The Trebuchet,” pp. 461–62. Chevedden has been slightly more persuasive in his attempt to do this with the Arabic and Greek terminology, Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet,” pp. 76–86; Chevedden, “King James I the Conqueror,” pp. 321–22.

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Jerusalem in 1099.13 But the term that appears to have been used most often to identify artillery during this period is machina – employed flexibly to identify anything that might be considered a “siege engine.”14 In some instances, machinae are described as fulfilling the functions of more than one engine, most often a siege tower incorporating a ram or a stone-thrower.15 The abundance of terminological uncertainty poses the greatest challenge to any attempt to analyse twelfth-century artillery. The Conqueror, His Sons and the First Crusade Few references to what may have been late eleventh-century artillery can be said to refer to such engines with much certainty. For example, Lanfrane refers to men with ballistarii and artifices machinarum in a letter to William I announcing the surrender of Norwich castle in 1075, while Orderic Vitalis mentions ambiguous machinae in his account of the siege.16 John of Worcester claims with equal vagueness that William II prepared machinae to use against his rebellious uncles who held Pevensey and Rochester in 1088.17 While artillery is hard to identify in Britain and Northern France in the eleventh century, it was clearly employed during the First Crusade. The contemporary accounts of the First Crusade reveal that artillery technology was unquestionably known to its leading figures. Stone-throwers were built by the various contingents of the crusading army to support siege efforts against Nicaea in

13

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Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardum 5.8, ed. Georg Waitz, MGH SS Rer. Germ. 48 (Hanover, 1878), p. 189; William of Tyre, Chronicon 8.6, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Chronique, Corpus Christianorum 63, 2 vols. (London, 1986), 1:392–93. Cf. Vitruvis, De architectura libri decem 10.1.3, ed. F. Krohn (Leipzig, 1912), p. 225. E.g. the Norman siege tower at Breval (1092), the Frankish siege tower at Tyre (1112–13) and the Italo-Norman siege tower at Durazzo (1081), Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 8.24, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–80), 4:288; Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl Tarikh Dimashq, trans. H. A. R. Gibb, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades (London, 1932), pp. 120–26; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana 12.5, ed. and trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007), pp. 828–35; Anna Comnena, Alexiad 3.12–4.7, trans. E. R. A. Sewter, Alexiad of Anna Comnena (London, 1969), pp. 131–49. Cf. Gesta Normannorum ducum 8.15, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1992–95), 2:228–31; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana 2.46.2–3, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), pp. 559–61. Regesta Willeilmi Conquestoris et Willelmi Rufi, ed. R. W. C. Davis, in Regesta regum AngloNormannorum, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1913), no. 82, p. 21; Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 4.14, ed. Chibnall, 2:316. Cf. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. Benjamin Thorpe, Rolls Series 23, 2 vols. (London, 1861), 1:348–50, 2:181–82; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 51, 4 vols. (London, 1868–71), 1:131–32. John of Worcester, Chronica chronicarum, ed. and trans. P. McGurk et al., The Chronicle of John of Worcester, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1995–), 2:52–53. Cf. Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 8.2, ed. Chibnall, 4:126; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 1:141–42; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. and trans. Thorpe, 1:357–58, 2:192–93.

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1097 and Jerusalem in 1099.18 These were antipersonnel weapons, used to clear battlements and inhibit the defenders’ ability to conduct an active defence. Some scholars have attempted to argue that Muslim artillery was superior to that of the crusaders or that the Latin forces received an education from the Byzantines prior to the siege of Nicaea, but such arguments have been conclusively disproved by those who have examined the evidence most closely.19 Instead, the casual way in which the sources discuss the construction and use of artillery implies that each regional force had prior knowledge and experience with such engines before leaving Europe.20 Conflicts such as the First Crusade facilitated the spread of knowledge and technology: those who survived and returned to Europe brought with them an appreciation of any stylistic differences between the artillery that they were familiar with and the engines employed by their fellow crusaders and Muslim opponents. Many of those who travelled to the East with Robert II of Normandy had rebelled against Robert’s brother, William II of England, or their father, William the Conqueror. Among those who joined Robert and survived to return to Europe were Bishop Gilbert of Évreux, Ivo and Aubrey of Grandmesnil, Count Stephen

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For the use of artillery at Nicaea, see Gesta Francorum 2.8, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill, The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem (Oxford, 1972), pp. 14–15; Guibert of Nogent, Die gesta per Francos 3.6–10, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum 127a (Turnhout, 1996), pp. 145–46; Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, historiens occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–95) [RHC Oc], 3:239; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana 1.10, ed. Hagenmeyer, pp. 185–87; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana 2.29, 32, ed. and trans. Edgington, pp. 110–11, 114–17; Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana 3.3, RHC Oc, 3:756; William of Tyre, Chronicon 3.6–9 (7–10), ed. Huygens, 1:203–8. For the use of artillery at Jerusalem, see Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum 10, RHC Oc, 3:298–99; Peter Tudebode, Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere 15.2, RHC Oc, 3:107; Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana 6.2, 9, 14–15, 17–19, ed. and trans. Edginton, pp. 406–7, 414–17, 420–23, 424–29; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana 1.27, ed. Hagenmeyer, pp. 296–99; Ralph of Caen, Gesta Tancredi 123–25, RHC Oc, 3:691–93; William of Tyre, Chronicon 8.6, 8, 13, ed. Huygens, 1:392–93, 395–96, 426–29. For arguments supporting the superiority of Muslim artillery, see A. Hamilton Thompson, Military Architecture in England during the Middle Ages (London, 1912), p. 66; Meron Benvenisti, The Crusaders in the Holy Land (New York, 1972), p. 284; Hugh Kennedy, Crusader Castles (Cambridge, 1994), p. 102. For theories that the Franks gained assistance in this regard from the Byzantines, see Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet,” pp. 76–78; Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1951–54), 1:227–28; Oman, A History of the Art of War, p. 526. For arguments against this technological disadvantage, see John France, “Technology and the Success of the First Crusade,” in War and Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, 7th–15th Centuries, ed. Yaacov Lev (Leiden, 1997), pp. 170–73; Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 244–46; Ibn al-Qalanisi, Dhayl Tarikh Dimashq, trans. Gibb, pp. 39–40. Using the later testimony of Anna Comnena, Paul Chevedden has attempted to argue that these engines were instead the first counterweight trebuchets, suggesting that this type of engine was invented by Emperor Alexius Comnenus and given to the Franks to use at Nicaea. Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet,” pp. 76–78, 81–85. See also Anna Comnena, Alexiad 11.2, trans. Sewter, pp. 335–36. Cf. John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 160–65; Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 16–25.

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of Aumale, and Gerard of Gournay. Others with close ties to the Anglo-Normans led their own contingents: Eustace III of Boulogne was a supporter of Robert of Normandy and the lord of vast lands in England; Stephen II of Blois was Robert’s brother-in-law and father of the future King Stephen of England. Another brotherin-law, Alan IV of Brittany, took part in the crusade, as did Robert II of Flanders and his brother-in-law Renaud II of Burgundy. In addition to the forces that set out in 1096, another group of Englishmen made their way to the Levant by sea, arriving in western Syria in 1098.21 Important sources, notably Fulcher of Chartres, a member of the First Crusade, and Ralph of Caen, who made his way to the East with Bohemond in 1107, can be said to have been part of the broader Norman world. There is no indication that the petrariae and tormenta noted by these men, or any of the artillery identified by the other sources, were anything exceptional, suggesting that both the scale of the engines used during the First Crusade and their method of employment were similar to those concurrently used in Europe. Despite the clarity provided by the sources during the First Crusade, references to artillery in Europe remain vague through the early twelfth century. The account of William II’s balistariae throwing incendiaries into the occupied town of Planches-Geoffroi could refer to the use of almost any ballistic weapon, while the identification of ballistae, used by Stephen’s forces to throw combustibles and stones amongst the garrison of Castle-Cary in 1138, is only slightly more specific.22 Even references to machinae are relatively rare in the first half of the twelfth century. The accounts of the First Crusade reveal that artillery was an antipersonnel weapon at this point in history. These were essentially mechanised hand-slings: although they required additional personnel to operate, they were capable of throwing larger stones at higher velocities with a similar rate of fire.23 The modest scale and prestige of these engines, coupled with the ease with which they could be manufactured, might suggest that they were rarely used in Anglo-Norman Europe or that they were simply overlooked by contemporary historians. The siege weapons most frequently distinguished during this early period are siege towers and siege forts.24 Visually impressive but expensive, consuming

21

22 23 24

For English and Norman participants of the First Crusade, see Jonathan Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 90–93; William Aird, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 165. For a more complete list of participants of the First Crusade, see Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, Appendix 1, pp. 197–238. Opponents of Henry I, such as Robert of Montfort, were similarly permitted to leave the Anglo-Norman realm to join Bohemond’s crusade against the Byzantines in 1107, see Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 11.24, ed. Chibnall, 6:100–04. Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 10.10, ed. Chibnall, 5:254; Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter (Oxford, 1976), pp. 66–68. This similarity was not lost on contemporaries. See, for example, the Angevin-led siege of Norman Le Sap in 1136, Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 13.26, ed. Chibnall, 6:470. The use of siege forts was a longstanding Norman siege tactic, employed long before and after the First Crusade. Clear examples of such can be found at the sieges of Wallingford

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significant resources of man-hours and materials, these appear only at the most significant sieges. Engines were erected at Exeter in 1136 only after the siege had begun to drag on, and the cost of these machines is stressed in contemporary accounts.25 Although artillery would have been comparatively inexpensive and was almost certainly constructed in instances where siege towers were raised, as had been done at Jerusalem, a preference for a more mobile and cost-effective style of warfare, which avoided set-piece sieges where possible, may also account for the infrequent notice of such engines during the early twelfth century. It is only with another massive crusading movement that the first detailed and definitive description of an Anglo-Norman stone-thrower can be found. The Siege of Lisbon Sailing for the Holy Land as part of the Second Crusade, Anglo-Norman and Germano-Flemish crusaders paused at Lisbon in 1147 and agreed to help take the city on behalf of Afonso I of Portugal. The anonymous Anglo-Norman source claims that both the attackers and defenders employed funde Balearice (Balearic slings) during the siege. While the terminology might imply that such engines were as simple as primitive hand slings, the descriptions of their use indicate that these were traction trebuchets. As during the First Crusade, the technology appears to have been well known to both the crusaders and the Muslim defenders: both sides built their engines early in the siege, implying that both were familiar with the technology, and at no point are those of one side portrayed as superior.26 Although the anonymous source does not describe the structure of either of the two Anglo-Norman funde Balearice, he gives a detailed account of their use. One of the machines was manned by sailors and the other by knights and their retainers. Teams of 100 men are said to have worked in relays to throw 5,000 stones in ten hours.27 The clean figure of 5,000 stones was likely invented to express the engines’ rate of fire; if taken at face value, this implies that one stone was shot every 7.2 seconds if they were thrown by a single engine, or one shot every 14.4 seconds if fired communally (8.3 and 4.2 shots per minute respectively). While this would appear to imply that these engines were quite

25

26 27

(1139) and Huntingdon (1174), John of Worcester, Chronica chronicarum, ed. and trans. McGurk et al., 3:272–73; Gesta Stephani, ed. Potter, p. 92; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 2:60. Gesta Stephani, ed. Potter, p. 34; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series 74 (London, 1879), p. 259; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 1:191; Walter of Coventry, Memoriale fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 58, 2 vols. (London, 1872–73), 1:158. De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. and trans. Charles Wendell David (New York, 1936), pp. 134–37. Ibid., pp. 142–43.

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light, Paul Chevedden has concluded that they were “hybrid-trebuchets” and Jim Bradbury has suggested that they were small counterweight engines.28 Both interpretations, however, are flawed. It is mechanically impossible for a crew of 100 to simultaneously operate a traction trebuchet effectively, as Chevedden implies was done, given the determinate mechanical restrictions involved.29 When considering Bradbury’s conclusion, it is equally impossible for even a small counterweight model to achieve such a praiseworthy rate of fire.30 Perplexingly, scholars have inexplicitly attempted to interpret these machines as more powerful than the norm, apparently deducing this from the large crew sizes. The eyewitness account, however, emphasises the rate of fire rather than the power of the funde Balearice. At no point is it stated that all 100 members of a relay team simultaneously attempted to power their engine. Perhaps only ten members of the larger crew would have worked an engine at any one time, allowing the pullers to work in shifts and maximise their rate of fire. While some rested, others could have gathered ammunition; a critical task, considering the number of stones that are said to have been thrown. As the knights and their retainers operated the more vulnerable machine, positioned near the Porta do Ferro, the teams charged with operating these engines may also have been responsible for protecting them against sallies by the defenders. The high rate of fire, even if significantly lower than that stated, implies that relatively small stones had been used: these were easier and less time consuming to find, collect and throw. This, not surprisingly, supports the description of the machines “tormenting” the garrison, rather than inflicting grievous harm on them or their fortifications. As at Jerusalem in 1099, it appears that the defenders employed their artillery to slow the advance of the crusaders and their siege towers, while the attackers used their stone-throwers to supress the defenders’ ability to defend the city from the parapet. Although these engines would have been a real threat to any exposed personnel, the limits of their power are indicated by the inability of the defenders’ machines to disable the

28

29

30

Chevedden, “King James I the Conqueror,” pp. 324–35; Bradbury, The Medieval Siege, p. 260. The “hybrid-trebuchet” is a theoretical type of traction trebuchet, whereby the short arm of the beam was provided with a load to offset the greater weight of the long arm, hypothetically allowing it to throw much heavier projectiles. Each puller is limited to an effective pull length of less than 1.5 m. This limits the potential length of the short arm, as it cannot travel a linear distance greater than the distance that a puller can pull through the firing sequence (between the load position and point of release). The dimensions of the long arm and mass of the projectile are thus dictated by the limiting dimensions of the short arm and force of the crew. These restrictions inhibit the effectiveness of large crews, as the direction of the pulling force becomes more spread out as more pullers are added. In practice, trials have shown that the addition of any more than about a dozen crew members is superfluous. For documentation of such trials, see W. T. S. Tarver, “The Traction Trebuchet: A Reconstruction of an Early Medieval Siege Engine,” Technology and Culture 36.1 (1995), 136–67, at pp. 157–58. For an example, see Peter Vemming Hansen, “Experimental Reconstruction of a Medieval Trebuchet,” Acta Archaeologica 63 (1992), 189–208, at p. 203.

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Anglo-Normans’ siege towers, even after the first tower became stuck in the sand and the second was brought within a few metres of the city wall. The descriptions of the artillery at Lisbon are regarded as the first clear evidence of the use of traction trebuchets in Europe. Köhler based his definition of petraria on these engines,31 although they are never referred to as such by the anonymous Anglo-Norman source. Similarly, Gillmor took this as a firm starting point from which to look back for earlier uses of traction trebuchets in Europe, by-passing their employment by Europeans during the First Crusade.32 The Reign of Henry II The ambiguity and indistinct terminology that characterises references to artillery in the early twelfth century continues into the second half of the century. John of Marmoutier appears to describe a traction trebuchet, similar to those employed at Lisbon, in his account of Geoffrey Plantagenet’s mid-twelfthcentury siege of Montreuil-Bellay. John claims that this engine, distinct from the petroritae, fundibulariae and mangonelli, was inspired by Vegetius, and his inexact description allows for the possibility that he was trying to describe a classical onager rather than a contemporary engine.33 In 1173, Louis VII employed machinae bellicae at Verneuil to help him to gain a section of the subdivided town.34 As these machines are credited neither with opening a breach, as might be expected of a ram or a powerful trebuchet, nor facilitating a frontal assault, as a siege tower might, it stands to reason that these were light, stone-throwing engines, similar to those employed at Lisbon and Jerusalem. Artillery was not yet a breaching weapon and the defenders of Verneuil’s Great Burgh surrendered, having run out of provisions, with their walls intact. The similarities between the artillery employed by Louis VII and that of the Anglo-Normans at Lisbon are highlighted at the siege of Rouen in 1174. According to William of Newburgh, Louis arranged to have his machinae worked constantly by dividing his force into three, assigning to each an eight-hour shift.35 Beginning with the siege of Dol in August 1173, variants of petraria (“stonethrower”) enter the vocabulary of the relevant chroniclers with increasing regularity. This appears to be in response to a familiar common source, as the trend is discernible in the works of Jordan Fantosme, Benedict of Peterborough, 31 32 33

34

35

Köhler, Die Entwickelung des Kriegswesens, 3:164–66. Gillmor, “The Introduction of the Traction Trebuchet,” p. 2. John of Marmoutier, Historia Gaufredi ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum, ed. Louis Halphen and René Poupardin, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou et des seigneurs d’Amboise (Paris, 1913), pp. 215–19. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 2:49–50; Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta regis Henrici secondi Benedicti abbatisi, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 49, 2 vols. (London, 1867), 1:49–50; Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, ed. Stubbs, 1:217–18. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, 2.36, ed. Richard Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, Rolls Series 82, vols. 1–2 (London, 1884–85), 1:191–92.

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Roger of Howden and the corresponding components of Walter of Coventry’s later work. Unlike the others, who state that petrariae or perrariae were employed against Dol, Robert of Torigni, who gives a similar account of the siege, refers to these engines as machinae.36 Benedict of Peterborough identifies petrariae at Louis’ siege of Rouen in 1174, as does Walter of Coventry subsequently. Roger of Howden also notes the presence of machinae bellicae at Rouen, but neither he nor Benedict mention the division of labour found in William of Newburgh’s account.37 At William I of Scotland’s siege of Wark in 1174, there is perhaps the first hint of a different type of engine being employed in Britain. In his poetic account, Jordan Fantosme claims that the first stone loosed by the assailing periere tumbled backwards out of its sling and hit a friendly knight, who was saved by his armour.38 Although Bradbury has regarded this accident and clear presence of a sling as indicative of a new, implicitly counterweight-powered, engine, such assumptions must be made with caution.39 At the Roman siege of Maogamalcha, Ammianus describes a very similar rearward misfire by a “scorpion,” with a less fortunate outcome for the victim.40 It is possible for a traction trebuchet to misfire backwards; however, it is slightly less likely to do so than a counterweight trebuchet, because the projectile is generally held in place by the loader until the slack is taken up and it is yanked free by the force of the pullers.41 The presence of another heavy engine is suggested at Philip II’s siege of Boves in 1185. William the Breton poetically wrote: Machina confestim vario fabricata paratu Surgit, et innumeris irritat jactibus arcem. Nunc Mangonellus, Turcorum more, minora Saza rotat; nunc vero petraria verso Vi Juvenum multa procliviter axe rotatur

36

37

38 39 40 41

Jordan Fantosme, The Metrical Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme ll. 195–97, ed. and trans. Richard Howlett in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, Rolls Series 82, vol. 3 (London, 1886), p. 220; Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta regis Henrici, ed. Stubbs, 1:56–57; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 2:51–52; Robert of Torigni, Chronique, ed. Richard Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, Rolls Series 82, vol. 4 (London, 1889), p. 260. William of Newburgh does not mention any siege engines in his account, William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum 2.29, ed. Howlett, 1:176. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta regis Henrici, ed. Stubbs, 1:73–75; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 2:65–66; William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum 2.36–37, ed. Howlett, 1:190–96. See also Walter of Coventry, Memoriale, ed. Stubbs, 1:231–32. Jordan Fantosme, Metrical Chronicle ll. 1240–71, ed. Howlett, pp. 306–8. Bradbury, The Medieval Siege, pp. 87, 267. Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae 24.4.28, ed. Francis Eyssenhardt (Berlin, 1871), p. 308. For illustrative examples of this technique, see Morgan (Maciejowski) Bible, c. 1250, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.638, fols. 23v, 43v; Peter of Eboli, Burgerbibliothek Bern, MS Cod. 120 II, fol. 109r; William of Tyre, Chronicon, c. 1278, St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS. fr. f° v.IV.5, vol. 1, fol. 18v.

12

Michael S. Fulton Retrogrado, tractis ad terram funibus acta, Damnificos funda fundit majore molares Incircumtusos et magni ponderis, ut vix Tollatur manibus bis quatuor unus eorum42 The engine, assembled quickly due to earlier preparation, arises and worries the citadel with countless shots. Now the mangonel whirls round smaller stones in the manner of the Turks. Now the menacing petraria is rotated back, its axle turned far down by the force of young men. Brought down to the ground by drawn ropes, the sling pours out damaging large stones, dressed and of such great weight that one of them may barely be lifted by four pairs of hands.

Here there is a clear division between engines of differing size. While the larger might easily be interpreted as a counterweight trebuchet, Fino has questioned the likelihood that any engine of this period could have propelled stones that required four men (eight hands) to lift them. Calculating that such stones would need to weigh at least 200 kg, Fino suggested that these might have been traction trebuchets and that the four men were required to pull the ropes, lifting the projectile indirectly.43 The smaller, Turkish type of engine was almost certainly a light traction trebuchet. Possibly foreshadowing terminology of the thirteenth century, engines denoted as “Turkish” by European sources generally refer to smaller varieties.44 Similarly, some Muslim sources classify the largest mid-thirteenth-century stone-throwers as maghribi (Western), a term which was replaced by ifranji (Frankish) around the 1260s.45 In the same way that the Anglo-Norman artillery employed during the First Crusade and later against Lisbon would appear to have been very similar to the engines of the besieged Muslims, so too were those employed by Richard I comparable to the engines employed by the defenders of Acre.

42

43 44

45

William the Breton, Philippide 2, ed. H.-François Delaborde, in Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, vol. 2 (Paris, 1885), p. 54. Cf. William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti 29, ed. H.-François Delaborde, in Oeuvres de Rigord et Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, vol. 1 (Paris, 1882), p. 183. Fino, “Machines de jet,” pp. 35–36. In the late twelfth-century treatise on weaponry that Mardi ibn Ali al-Tarsusi presented to Saladin, the “Turkish mangonel” is the lightest of the three types of trestle-framed traction trebuchets that he includes; only the luʾab, which had a single vertical pole supporting the axle, was lighter. Al-Tarsusi, Tabsirah arbab al-albab, c. 1180, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hunt. 264, fols. 132v–138r. James I of Aragon made use of such an engine, in addition to trebuchets and a fenèvol, during his conquest of Majorca in 1229. James I of Aragon, Llibre dels fets 69, trans. Damian Smith and Helena Buffery, The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon (Aldershot, 2003), p. 93. See below for references to “Turkish” engines in English administrative records. For the use of these terms, see Michael S. Fulton, “Artillery in and around the Latin East (1097–1291)” (Cardiff University PhD thesis, 2016), esp. Appendix 1, pp. 368–72, for a list of their use see Appendix 2, p. 419.

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The Reign of Richard I The siege of Acre had been raging for nearly two years before the main body of Angevin crusaders (from England, Normandy, Poitou and elsewhere) arrived with Richard I on 8 June 1191. The presence of artillery at this siege is emphasised in both the Anglo-Norman and Muslim eyewitness accounts.46 Ambroise and the Itinerarium identify the use of nine Christian perieres/petrariae following the arrival of Richard I and Philip II: Richard had two; Philip had at least one; the count of Flanders had two, which passed to Richard following his death; the Templars, Hospitallers and duke of Burgundy each maintained one; and one was funded communally. Two mangonels/mangunelli were also commissioned by Richard.47 The defenders appear to have had at least one engine that was comparable to Philip’s notable stone-thrower, dubbed Bad Neighbour (Male Veisine/Mala Vieina) and Bad Cousin (Male Cosine/Mala cognata) respectively.48 Unlike lighter defensive engines, this one was probably mounted on the ground behind Acre’s curtain walls rather than on top of a tower.49 The defenders initially used their artillery to target the crusaders’ siege towers and cumbersome siege engines during the attacks of 1190. With the focus placed on artillery by Richard

46

47 48 49

Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte ll. 3202, 3535–60, 3859–70, 4939–47, ed. Paris, pp. 86, 95, 103–4, 132; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi 1.36, 47a, 59, 2.28, 3.4, 7, 8, 12, 16, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 38, vol. 1 (London, 1864), pp. 84–85, 98, 112, 181, 214, 218–20, 221, 225, 230; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 3:113, 115, 116–17; Bahaʾ al-Din, al-Nawadir al-Sultaniyya waʾl-Mah.asin al-Yusufiyya, trans. D. S. Richards, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 122–25, 130, 148, 150, 155; ʿImad al-Din al-Isfahani, al-Fath al-Qussi fi-l-Fath al-Qudsi, trans. Henri Massé, Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, Documents Relatifs à l’Histoire des Croisades 10 (Paris, 1972), pp. 218, 245, 258, 296–97, 306–7, 310–11; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fiʾl-taʾrikh, trans. D. S. Richards, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, 3 vols. (Aldershot, 2008), 2:373–74, 378, 387. See also Ralph of Diceto, Ymagines historiarum, ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series 68, 2 vols. (London, 1876), 2:94. Both ʿImad al-Din and Bahaʾ al-Din witnessed the siege from within Saladin’s army, which was camped close to the Frankish besiegers throughout the siege. It would appear as though Roger of Howden, Ambroise and the author of this portion of the Itinerarium were all present for at least part of the siege of Acre, the former two arriving with Richard, while the latter may have preceded them as early as 1189. See John Gillingham, “Roger of Howden on Crusade,” in Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century, ed. John Gillingham (London, 1994), pp. 141–53; Helen J. Nicholson, Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 6–15; Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Saint (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 12–13. Although Ralph of Diceto did not take part in the crusade, he was well informed of its progress. Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte ll. 4743–800, ed. Paris, pp. 127–28; Itinerarium 3.7, ed. Stubbs, pp. 218–20. Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte ll. 4745–46, ed. Paris, p. 127; Itinerarium 3.7, ed. Stubbs, p. 218. For the positioning of defensive engines and their influence on the design of fortifications, see Fulton, “Artillery in and around the Latin East,” pp. 292–329.

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and Philip, the strongest of the defenders’ engines targeted these in 1191.50 The engines’ ability to repeatedly damage Philip’s petraria implies that the effective range of these two engines was comparable.51 Notably, no distinctions are drawn between the engines used by the local Frankish baronage, those built by the crusaders and those of the Muslim garrison. Not even the engines that Richard prepared ahead of time on Sicily are portrayed as any more remarkable than the others.52 It is astonishing that neither a Londoner nor a Mosuli should find anything exceptional about the other side’s artillery. This speaks to the technological similarities between the engines of the attackers and defenders and the cross-cultural flow of information during this period. The apparent similarity of these engines implies that there was little technological knowledge to be gained during the siege of Acre; as such, the engines used in and around Anglo-Norman Europe before the siege of Acre were probably very similar to those used afterwards. A literal reading of the eyewitness sources can convey the impression that the artillery used at Acre was particularly powerful, leading later sources to emphasise this and many modern historians to conclude, without due analysis, that counterweight trebuchets were used.53 While Bahaʾ al-Din vividly describes how the walls shook during the bombardment of the summer of 1191, ʿImad al-Din clearly places the focus of the attackers’ fire on the parapet.54 The latter’s suggestion that the walls had been reduced to the height of a man by the last days of the siege, repeated in Bahaʾ al-Din’s subsequent account, must be approached with caution, given the source’s poetic style and his tendency to embellish certain elements for dramatic effect.55 Randal Rogers cautiously suggests that counterweight engines may have been used at the siege of Acre but

50 51

52

53

54 55

Bahaʾ al-Din, al-Nawadir, trans. Richards, pp. 130, 150; ʿImad al-Din, al-Fath, trans. Massé, pp. 218, 258; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, trans. Richards, 2:373–74. It is possible that the attacking Frankish engine may have had a greater maximum range but that this was shortened in order to throw heavier projectiles, allowing the defending engine to throw lighter projectiles, still large enough to damage the structure and rigging of the targeted engine, the same distance. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 3:72. For the practice of importing artillery and ammunition in this theatre during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Michael S. Fulton, “Development of Prefabricated Artillery during the Crusades,” Journal of Medieval Military History 13 (2015), 51–72. Medieval examples include James of Vitry, Historia Orientalis, ed. and trans. Jean Donnadieu (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 454–55; Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis 3.9.6, ed. J. Bongars (Hanover, 1611, reprinted with foreword by Joshua Prawer, Jerusalem, 1972), p. 192. For modern examples, see Benvenisti, The Crusaders in the Holy Land, pp. 284–85; David Nicolle, “The Early Trebuchet: Documentary and Archaeological Evidence,” in La fortification au temps des croisade, ed. Nicolas Faucherre, Jean Mesqui and Nicolas Prouteau (Rennes, 2004), p. 272. ʿImad al-Din, al-Fath, trans. Massé, pp. 306–8, 310–11, 314–15; Bahaʾ al-Din, al-Nawadir, trans. Richards, p. 155, see also p. 156. For the relationship between accounts of ʿImad al-Din and Bahaʾ al-Din and when they wrote their histories, see D. S. Richards, “A Consideration of Two Sources for the Life of Saladin,” Journal of Semitic Studies 25.1 (1980), 46–65, at pp. 58–61.

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asserts that it cannot be said with certainty that any engine more powerful than a traction trebuchet was employed.56 Although no engine is clearly described as a counterweight trebuchet nor are any indicative mechanical parts identified, such as a counterweight or winch, there is circumstantial evidence, besides descriptions of destruction, that suggests that counterweight engines were used at Acre. The earliest surviving illustration of a counterweight trebuchet can be found in Mardi ibn Ali al-Tarsusi’s treatise on weaponry. In the description that he provided to accompany the illustration, al-Tarsusi confirms that such engines had previously been built. The work was presented to Saladin prior to the siege of Acre, leaving little doubt that he was familiar with this technology before Richard and Philip arrived in the Levant.57 Richard I’s use of imported ammunition, brought along with his engines from Sicily, is perhaps the strongest textual evidence that counterweight artillery was employed at Acre.58 While it is conceivable that there would have been value in prefabricating and transporting lighter traction engines, the restricted release velocity of such engines would have impaired the amount of energy that their projectiles would have been able to transfer upon impact.59 Unless these were simply ballast stones, it is hard to explain why special projectiles would be imported only to be thrown at such a limited velocity, especially when considering the number that would be required, given the traction trebuchet’s rapid rate of fire. On the other hand, a smaller number of hard volcanic stones, thrown at a higher velocity, would have had a much more dramatic effect against the soft kurkar sandstone of Acre’s defences. A precedent for this practice had been established in 1174 when Sicilian forces brought ammunition, along with prefabricated engines, when they laid siege to Alexandria in 1174.60 Saladin

56 57

58 59 60

Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 227, 234–35. Al-Tarsusi, Bodleian, MS Hunt. 264, fols. 134v–135r. For a study of this work, including the section concerning artillery, see Claude Cahen, “Un traité d’armurerie composé pour Saladin,” Bulletin d’études Orientales 12 (1947–48), pp. 103–63. For differing English translations of al-Tarsusi’s description of this engine, see Bernard Lewis, ed., Islam: From the Prophet Mohammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1974), 1:221–22; Paul E. Chevedden, “The Citadel of Damascus” (University of California, Los Angeles PhD thesis, 1986), p. 278 n. 26 (on pp. 299–300); Nicolle, “Early Trebuchet,” pp. 275–76. The undeveloped nature of al-Tarsusi’s drawing and its accompanying description suggest that this type of engine was still quite primitive at that point in time. The engine’s counterweight was a basket filled with stones, restricting its mass, and its low axle required a hole to be dug for the counterweight to fall into, restricting the beam’s range of rotation. Although it would appear as though this design had been improved by the time that Acre was besieged, it suggests that the technology was relatively new, perhaps no more than a few decades old. Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte ll. 4743–800, ed. Paris, pp. 127–28; Itinerarium 3.7, ed. Stubbs, pp. 218–20. For an examination of the development of prefabricated artillery in and around the Latin East, see Fulton, “Development of Prefabricated Artillery,” pp. 51–72. Abu Shama, Kita bar-Raudatain (Le livre des deux jardins), in Recueil des historiens des croisades, historiens orientaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1872–1906), 4:164–66; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’lta’rikh, trans. Richards, 2:229–30; al-Maqrizi, Kitab al-Suluk, trans. R. J. C. Broadhurst,

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appears to have adapted a similar strategy when he sent out detachments to gather river stones to feed the engines that he erected against Jaffa in 1192.61 Although there are indications that counterweight trebuchets were employed against Acre, the power of these engines should not be overestimated. Artillery had been employed against Acre from the spring of 1190 and the lack of damage that these engines were able to inflict before the arrival of Richard I and Philip II should not go unappreciated. With the kings came their wealth and massive armed contingents, but the trebuchets erected following their arrival were not breaching weapons – at no point did artillery create an aperture that could be stormed. Instead, both Anglo-Norman and Muslim sources considered mining to be the greatest threat to Acre’s defences. The engines that Richard I and Philip II employed in Europe were probably similar to those that they had used against Acre. The increasing power of artillery is indicated by the emphasis that Ralph of Diceto places on the size of the stones cast by Philip’s engines at Verneuil in 1194.62 In the same year Roger of Howden notes Richard’s erection of artillery against Nottingham; an unexceptional remark until it is set against the corresponding administrative records. After the siege of Nottingham had been concluded, payments were made crediting expenses that had been incurred transporting petrariae and plurima ingenia.63 Not only does this confirm that some of the king’s artillery was prefabricated, but it also indicates that the value of these engines was sufficiently great to warrant their conveyance to Nottingham, despite the presence of suitable timber to build new engines locally.64 These were probably counterweight trebuchets: the scale of a traction trebuchet was always limited by the nature of its energy source, so engines of this type remained largely the same size throughout the medieval period; the size of a counterweight trebuchet was limited only by the strength of its structure, thus such engines continued to grow

61

62

63

64

A History of the Ayyubid Sultans of Egypt (Boston, 1980), pp. 48–50; Bahaʾ al-Din, al-Nawadir, trans. Richards, p. 67. Randall Rogers suggests that these were meant to shatter upon impact; however, it seems more likely that the volcanic stone was brought because it was much harder than the local stone of the Nile Delta. See Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, p. 121. Bahaʾ al-Din, al-Nawadir, trans. Richards, p. 219. This practice of bringing stones from the hills of Judea and Samaria appears to have been repeated at the sieges of Ascalon (1244) and Arsuf (1265). For the latter, see Kate Raphael and Yotam Tepper, “The Archaeological Evidence from the Mamluk Siege of Arsuf,” Mamluk Studies Review 9.1 (2005), pp. 85–100, at pp. 87–88. Ralph of Diceto, Ymagines historiarum, ed. Stubbs, 2:114–15. See also Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:82; Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:405. Cf. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum 5.2, ed. Howlett, 1:123; Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. Francisque Michel (Paris, 1840), p. 88. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 3:238–40; The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Sixth Year of the Reign of King Richard the First (Pipe Roll 40), ed. Doris M. Stenton (London, 1928), p. 43. See also Bachrach, “English Artillery,” p. 1419. Cf. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:280–81; William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti 179, ed. Delaborde, p. 263.

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in scale and value throughout the thirteenth century.65 As such engines grew larger and more costly, so too did they became more vulnerable. It may have come at quite a cost when Philip II burned more than twenty perrariae that he had positioned around Rouen when he gave up his siege of that city in 1193.66 The Reign of John Despite evident improvements in ballistic siege technology, the most powerful trebuchets of the early thirteenth century were still not effective breaching weapons. This check is evident in Roger of Wendover’s account of the siege of Arques in 1202: despite fifteen days of constant barrage, Philip II’s petrariae were unable to affect a breach.67 Accordingly, it was more likely the size of the French force, rather than its artillery – machinae according to Roger of Wendover – that compelled the surrender of Vaudreuil in 1203 before hostilities had even begun.68 During Philip’s rapid campaign of conquest in 1203–4, Château Gaillard, built by Richard I from 1197 as a strongpoint on the Seine between Paris and Rouen,69 offered particularly stiff resistance.70 Following months of passive

65 66

67

68

69

70

For the proportional limits of traction trebuchets, see n. 29 above. For illustrative examples of the consistent size of such engines see ns. 3 and 41 above. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 3:206–7; Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti 94, ed. H.-François Delaborde, in Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, vol. 1 (Pari, 1882), p. 126. For a similar episode the same year, see Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti 100, ed. H.-François Delaborde, p. 130. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:169–70. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:479. Cf. History of William Marshal ll. 12044–55, ed. and trans. A. J. Holden, S. Gregory and D. Crouch, 3 vols. (London, 2002–6), 2:102. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:172. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:483. Cf. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series 66 (London, 1875), p. 143. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 4:14, 17–19; Ralph of Diceto, Ymagines historiarum, ed. Stubbs, 2:148–50, 153–56, 160–62. See also Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:95, 118–21, 128. For the construction of Château Gaillard and context of Richard’s other building projects in Normandy, see H. M. Colvin, ed., The History of the King’s Works, 6 vols. (London, 1963–82), 1:293; F. M. Powick, The Loss of Normandy (1189–1204) (Manchester, 1913), pp. 281–91. The castle was considered exceptional even in its own day and was used as a base by Richard in 1198, before his death the following April, and was from where John probably set out to negotiate with Philip on the frontier a number of times between 1199 and 1201, Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 4:51–52, 55, 95, 106, 114–15, 164. See also Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:141, 146, 166. The castle overlooked the village of Andely, which had been taken by Louis VI in 1119 and burnt by Louis VII in 1167: Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiasticae 12.12, ed. Chibnall, 6:216–18; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, 1:282; Etienne of Rouen, Draco Normannicus 2.15, ll. 789–818, ed. Richard Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, Rolls Series 82, vol. 2 (London, 1885), pp. 689–90. William the Breton, Philippide 7, ed. Delaborde, pp. 179–208; William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti 125–29, ed. Delaborde, pp. 216–20. For additional accounts of the siege, see Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti 141, ed. Delaborde, pp. 158–59; Roger of Wendover, Flores

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blockade, Philip gave orders that siege efforts should be intensified in February 1204. The French used artillery (tormenta) to provide cover for those filling the fosse and then for the sappers as they began to work against the outer curtain. The defenders replied in kind, throwing larger stones with their petrariae and smaller ones with their mangonelli.71 Amidst the artillery duel, the miners were able to complete their work and, according to William the Breton, the great tower securing the apex of the outer bailey was brought down.72 Following their capture of the middle bailey, the besiegers once more relied on their miners when they confronted the defences of the inner bailey. The wall around the gate was undermined but did not fall, leading the French to bring up a large petraria, called Cabulus/Chadabula. According to William the Breton, three shots from this engine caused the significantly weakened masonry around the gateway to collapse, ultimately compelling the garrison to surrender.73 Although a petraria cast the fatal blow, the work of the sappers allowed for such a dramatic end to the siege.74 Fino regarded the siege of Château Gaillard as the advent of breaching artillery,75 but Oman’s earlier interpretation appears to be more accurate: “the ‘Cabulus’ might have battered forever at the scalloped walls of the inner ward if the way had not been prepared for it by the pick of the engineers.”76 In the aftermath of this siege, the significance of artillery is stressed by Roger of Wendover in his accounts of John’s sieges of Montauban in 1206 and Novent in 1214, while he attributes the rebellious barons’ inability to take Northampton in 1215 to their failure to employ such engines.77 But the ineffectiveness of artillery as a breaching weapon is evident at the siege of Rochester in 1215. While most accounts of the siege of Rochester attribute the fall of the outer bailey to mining, the Barnwell Chronicle uniquely claims that John employed five engines to breach this enceinte.78 Once inside the outer wall, sappers subsequently undermined the keep, compelling the defenders, on the brink of starvation, to surrender. Roger of Howden characterises John’s petrariae as

71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78

historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:172–73; Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, pp. 96–103; Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:483; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Stevenson, p. 144. See also Oman, A History of the Art of War, pp. 535–38. William the Breton, Philippide 7, ed. Delaborde, pp. 201–3; William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti 128, ed. Delaborde, pp. 218. William the Breton, Philippide 7, ed. Delaborde, pp. 203–4; William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti 129, ed. Delaborde, pp. 218–19. William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti 129, ed. Delaborde, p. 219. For the broader context that this siege took place in, see Dominique Pitte, “Château-Gaillard dans la défense de la Normandie orientale (1196–1204),” Anglo-Norman Studies 24 (2002), 163–75. Saladin appears to have attempted a similar tactic with less success during his siege of Jaffa in 1192, Bahaʾ al-Din, al-Nawadir, trans. Richards, pp. 217–19. Fino, “Machines de jet,” p. 36. Oman, A History of the Art of War, p. 536. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:186–87, 280–81, 299. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:494–95, 573, 586. R. A. Brown, Rochester Castle, Kent (London, 1969), p. 13.

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harassing weapons, operating alongside the archers and slingers.79 Mangonniaus are mentioned in the Histoire des ducs de Normandie but the Annales de Dunstaplia and Ralph of Coggeshall omit any notice of artillery, focusing exclusively on John’s use of mining and the hunger afflicting the besieged.80 When the sources are viewed collectively, John appears to have employed artillery at Rochester much as Richard had at Acre and Philip had at Château Gaillard: most engines were used to create a hostile environment along the parapet, inhibiting the garrison’s ability to maintain an active defence and lessening the threat facing the sappers. This tactic was employed at Dover by forces hostile to John the following year. According to Roger of Wendover, Prince Louis of France sent for a petraria before actively investing the great stronghold of Dover in 1216.81 The Histoire des ducs de Normandie also notes the presence of artillery, perrieres and mongouniaus, as does Ralph of Coggeshall, who refers less specifically to these engines as machinae.82 Louis employed a number of other siege machines, including a siege tower and various shelters, to provide further protection for his sappers.83 Hugh de Burgh led an active defence and the garrison was initially able to keep the besieging engines at a distance. Although the French sappers eventually undermined the castle’s barbican and outer enceinte, the siege was interrupted around the time of John’s death in the autumn of 1216.84 Louis appears to have removed his artillery when he withdrew over the winter, leaving a force to blockade the castle until his planned return in the spring.85

79 80

81 82 83

84

85

Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:330–36. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:621–26. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, p. 159; Annales prioratus de Dunstaplia, ed. Henry Richards Luard, in Annales monastici, Rolls Series 36, vol. 3 (London, 1866), p. 44; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Stevenson, pp. 175–76. For a secondary account of the siege of Rochester, see Brown, Rochester Castle, 12–15. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:380. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:664. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, pp. 177–79; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Stevenson, p. 182. Cf. Annales de Dunstaplia, ed. Luard, p. 47. The extent of the Franco-Baronial siege works at Dover was probably necessitated by the considerable rebuilding efforts that had taken place at the castle, almost £7,000 having been invested in this between 1179 and 1191, while a further £1,000 had been contributed by John. By comparison, Richard had invested the equivalent of around £11,500 in the construction of the then-unparalleled Château-Gaillard, Lesser Andely and the defences controlling this part of the Seine: R. A. Brown, “Royal Castle-Building in England, 1154–1216,” English Historical Review 70 (1955), pp. 353–98, at pp. 356–57, 365–67. See also Colvin, ed., The History of the King’s Works, 2:629. A truce may have been arranged earlier in September and simply extended following John’s death on 18 October. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, p. 182; Jonathan Coad, Dover Castle and the Defences of Dover (London, 1995), pp. 39–40. For secondary accounts of the siege of Dover, see John Goodall, “Dover Castle and the Great Siege of 1216,” Château Gaillard 19 (2000), pp. 91–102; Coad, Dover Castle, pp. 38–40.

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References to Prince Louis’ use of artillery in England after landing in 1216,86 as well as Roger of Wendover’s remark that he summoned at least one engine before initiating the siege of Dover, suggest that Louis was transporting his artillery with him. As a result, these engines were absent when the blockaders’ camp at Dover was sacked over the winter.87 It is possible that the same engines that had been used against Dover were those set up against Hertford and Berkhamstead before the end of 1216.88 The sources place less emphasis on the artillery employed by the barons at Windsor. This may suggest that their engines were less impressive than those employed by the French prince, but it just as likely reflects the lesser significance attributed to this siege.89 In 1217, stone-throwing machinae, mangonels/mangonelli/mangouniaus and perrieres/petrariae were employed at the royalist siege of Mountsorrel, and the French-baronial siege of Lincoln.90 In his account of the latter, Roger of Wendover uses the term mangonella for the first time in an account of a European siege. Although there is little to indicate that Roger regarded these engines as mechanically distinct or to have been employed in a different manner than those identified by different terms, his abnormal choice of vocabulary, even if common in contemporary works, is notable when considering the events at Dover the same year. Louis renewed the siege of Dover on 12 May 1217. According to the Histoire des ducs de Normandie, Louis brought and set up a trebuket, while the Annales de Dunstaplia similarly identifies the use of a tribuclietta among many other engines.91 The trebuchez, found in L’histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, which weighed down a vessel sailing to Dover in the spring of 1217, would appear

86 87 88

89

90

91

Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, pp. 173–74; Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:371. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:655. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:3–4; Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, p. 189. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:4, 5–6. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 3:5. Matthew Paris deviates from Roger of Wendover’s description of the siege of Berkhamstead and omits the small section dealing with artillery, Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 3:5, 6, 8. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Stevenson, pp. 182–83; Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:381; Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, p. 177. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:665; History of William Marshal ll. 16481–90, 16629–42, ed. Holden, Gregory and Crouch, 2:326, 332–34. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:14, 20–22; Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, pp. 193–94. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 3:15, 19–21. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, ed. Michel, pp. 188, 192–96; Annales de Dunstaplia, ed. Luard, pp. 48–49. This is the earliest use of a variant of the term “trebuchet” that I have come across in an Anglo-Norman context. Roger of Wendover uses trebuculos to identify artillery at the sieges of Jerusalem (1099) and Damietta (1218) but does not employ the term in a European context, notably omitting the use of such in his account of the Albigensian Crusade, Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 2:135, 4:37–37, cf. 4:62–63, 129–30. For the earliest known uses of this term in the late twelfth century, see n. 6 above.

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to be related.92 While Roger of Wendover does not provide an account of the 1217 portion of the siege, the petraria that he claims Louis summoned before beginning the siege may be the same as that distinguished by other sources in the spring of 1217.93 Despite the unique terminology used by many sources to identify this engine, it proved no more successful as a breaching engine than those that Louis had employed the year before. Although the siege lasted only a matter of days, there is little to suggest that this engine was technologically different from the notable engines employed by Richard I and Philip II.94 The Minority of Henry III The appearance of the term “trebuchet” in England corresponds with its emergence elsewhere.95 The term first appears as trabuchellus and trabuchis in records of events from northern Italy dating to the end of the twelfth century.96 Subsequently, a tribok, or tribracho, was used by Otto IV, nephew of Richard I and John of England, in 1212.97 Provençal variants of the term are found in the Chanson de la croisade Albigeoise, notable as some of the northern crusaders who participated in the early phases of this conflict also took part in Prince Louis’s invasion of England.98 Although forms of the term “trebuchet” would appear to refer exclusively to counterweight trebuchets when found in AngloNorman narrative sources, this cannot be proved conclusively. The same is true of the first variants appearing in administrative records, beginning in 1225 when payments were made for the construction of trebucheta at Dover, Winchester and Windsor.99

92 93

94 95

96

97

98

99

History of William Marshal ll. 17387–96, 17452, ed. Holden, Gregory and Crouch, 2:370–72, 374. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 3:380. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 2:664. Ralph of Coggeshall does not mention any engines during this brief siege, Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Stevenson, p. 185. For the events 1215–17, see Sean McGlynn, Blood Cries Afar (Stroud, 2011). For a linguistic study of the term “trebuchet,” see William Sayers, “The Name of the Siege Engine trebuchet: Etymology and History in Medieval France and Britain,” Journal of Medieval Military History 8 (2010), 189–96. Giambatista Verci, ed., Storia degli Ecelini, 3 vols. (Brassano, 1779), no. 52, 3:97; Annales Placentini Guelfi, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, MGH SS 18 (Hanover, 1836), p. 420. For the emergence of these terms, see also France, Western Warfare, pp. 121–23; Huuri, Zur Geschichte des Mittelalterlichen Geschutzwesens, p. 171. Annales Marbacenses, ed. R. Wilmans, MGH SS 17 (Hanover, 1861), p. 172; Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS 30 pt. 1 (Leipzig, 1925), p. 580; Chronica S Petri Erfordensis moderna, MGH SS 30 pt. 1 (Leipzig, 1925), p. 383. Cf. Schneider, Die Artillerie des Mittelalters, p. 28. Chanson de la croisade Albigeoise, 92, 106, 192, 203–4, 213, ed. Paul Meyer, La Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, vol. 1 (Paris, 1875), pp. 93–94, 104, 284, 332–33, 377, trans. J. Shirley, Song of the Cathar Wars (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 51, 54–55, 141, 167–68, 191. See also Chronico Sancti Martini Turonensi, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH SS 26 (Leipzig, 1925), p. 73. Bachrach, “English Artillery,” pp. 1421–22.

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Although Roger of Wendover mentions trebuculi at the sieges of Jerusalem in 1099 and Damietta in 1218–19,100 at no point does he refer to their use in a European context. The manner in which he deals with artillery remains consistent following the siege of Dover: he notes the use of petrariae to batter Newark for eight days in 1218,101 and machinae to assail Biham in 1221.102 There is little in the other contemporary accounts to suggest that a technological shift accompanied the arrival of this new term. While it is possible that the engine used at Dover in 1217 was mechanically unique, it is at least as likely that the diffusion of a new, yet continuously developing, technology had preceded or far outpaced the spread of the new vocabulary with which it came to be identified. This new terminology may even have been brought to England by the French invaders, variants of the term “trebuchet” having already spread out of Italy and permeated the works of French and German sources. Roger of Wendover continues to use traditional terminology when referring to the artillery, petrariae and mangonella, of Henry III that was brought to bear against Bedford castle in June 1224.103 The nearby compiler of the Annales de Dunstaplia specifies that in addition to two siege towers, one petraria and two maggunella were positioned to the east of the castle, to assail the keep, and four more maggunella were positioned around the castle: two to the west to target a certain “old tower,” one to the north and one to the south.104 Letters sent by the king between 20 and 30 June reveal that some of these engines were prefabricated and transported to the siege.105 According to the Annales de Dunstaplia, the stone-throwers to the north and south of the castle were each able to open a breach in the curtain closest to them. The use of penthouses and miners, however, suggests that these engines may have been used in a more traditional supporting role – it is hard to imagine stones sufficiently large to cause structural damage being thrown against a section of wall directly above a group of sappers. The supposed breaches also appear to be exaggerated, as these were not how the attackers gained entrance. The castle is described as falling in four attacks: the first captured the barbican, the second took the outer enceinte and the third gained the inner bailey, after a section of wall was brought down near the “old tower.” It is specified that this breach was created by sapping, rather than artillery, suggesting that the two maggunella positioned against this tower were used to provide cover for the 100 101 102 103

104 105

Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 2:135, 4:37, 52, 61. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:35. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 3:33–34. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:67. Cf. Annales de Dunstaplia, ed. Luard, p. 64. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:96. See also Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 3:85; Emilie Amt, “Besieging Bedford: Military Logistics in 1224,” Journal of Medieval Military History 1 (2002), 101–24, at pp. 103–04. Annales de Dunstaplia, ed. Luard, p. 87. G. H. Fowler, “Munitions in 1224,” Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 5 (1920), 119–29; Amt, “Besieging Bedford,” p. 111.

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miners. The fourth assault was poised to be made after a mine under a tower (identified by Emile Amt as the keep) was fired, though the rising smoke was enough to compel the defenders to surrender.106 Later and less detailed accounts also emphasise the role of mining rather than artillery,107 a point highlighted by Amt in her comprehensive study of this siege.108 In his study of thirteenth-century English artillery, based entirely on administrative records, David Bachrach identified a chancery writ issued in October 1225 ordering the barons of the exchequer to credit the sheriff of Bedford for the expenses he incurred during the siege. Among the listed items are fifty slings for petrariae and mangonelli and two circles of iron used to make winches (turnus) for the latter.109 This led Bachrach to conclude that the petraria was a type of trebuchet, while the mangonellus was a classical stone-throwing torsion engine. Besides the lack of literary or illustrative evidence to suggest that torsion stone-throwers were employed anywhere in Western Europe at this point in time, the descriptions provided by the sources do not indicate that such engines were used at Bedford. The maggunella identified in the Annales de Dunstaplia appear to have been supporting weapons: the slow rate of fire of a counterweight trebuchet or torsion catapult would make them ill-suited for such a task. When considering that a traction trebuchet could achieve a far higher rate of fire and was much simpler to construct and operate, there would have been little incentive to employ a torsion engine in this role, had the technology been known. Furthermore, most onearmed torsion engines appear to have been able to transfer no more energy to a projectile than could a traction trebuchet, contrary to the figures provided by some classical sources.110 Accordingly, the petraria, which appears to have been more powerful than the maggunella, was probably a counterweight trebuchet. The winches referenced in the Chancery writ were almost certainly intended for one of more engines of this type. Due to the lack of terminological consistency among narrative sources, it could be argued that the mangonelli referred to in the writ correspond with the

106 107

108 109 110

Annales de Dunstaplia, ed. Luard, pp. 87–88. E.g. Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. Coxe, 4:96–97; Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. Luard, 3:85–89; Chronicon Thomae Wykes, ed. Henry Richard Luard, in Annales monastici, Rolls Series 36, vol. 4 (London, 1869), pp. 63–64; Annales de Osney, ed. Henry Richard Luard, in Annales monastici, Rolls Series 36, vol. 4 (London, 1869), p. 65; Annales de Wigornia, ed. Henry Richard Luard, in Annales monastici, Rolls Series 36, vol. 4 (London, 1869), p. 416. Amt, “Besieging Bedford,” pp. 101–24, esp. p. 114. See also Bradbury, The Medieval Siege, pp. 140–41. Bachrach, “English Artillery,” pp. 1415–16, citing Rotuli litterarum clausarum in turri Londonensi asservati 1204–1227, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols. (1833–34), 2:65. For studies that try to balance the testimony of classical sources with real-world conditions, with varying success, see Ralph Payne-Gallwey, The Projectile Throwing Engines of the Ancients (London, 1907); Erwin Schramm, Die antiken Geschütze der Saalburg: Bemerkungen zu ihrer Rekonstruktion (Berlin, 1918); E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Development (Oxford, 1969), pp. 86–98. Cf. Tarver, “The Traction Trebuchet,” pp. 136–67.

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heavier of the engines found in the narrative sources – the petraria(e). It is possible that the author of the Annales de Dunstaplia abandoned the term tribuclietta, used earlier at the siege of Dover, in favour of the more traditional petraria, clearly distinguished from the lighter engines that are consistently referred to as maggunella. Although only one petraria appears is the Annales, the Chancery writ suggests that the winches were for more than one mangonelli. Roger of Wendover’s use of the plural when identifying both engine types (petrariae and mangonella) also suggests that the besiegers may have employed more than one counterweight trebuchet.111 The projectiles that have been discovered at Bedford weigh between 10 and 18 kg,112 a size that could have been thrown effectively by both traction and counterweight varieties of trebuchet.113 While quarrymen would have possessed sufficient skill to provide roughly shaped ammunition for traction trebuchets, the summoning of stonecutters on 30 June might indicate that a greater degree of skill was required to prepare ammunition for a different kind of engine. In contrast to the high rate of fire of traction trebuchets, counterweight trebuchets might fire no more than one shot every ten minutes over a protracted period of time.114 But because a counterweight trebuchet threw each stone with the same amount of energy, rather than the inevitably varying traction power supplied by teams of pullers, it was extremely accurate so long as it was provided with welldressed ammunition of a consistent mass. The summoning of the stonecutters is thus another indication that counterweight trebuchets were likely employed at this siege. It is not unreasonable to suggest that counterweight trebuchets were used at Château Gaillard (1203–4), Rochester (1215), Dover (1216–17) and Bedford (1225) but that these were still relatively immature engines. Mining was employed on each occasion and inflicted far more structural damage. The integration of these engines does not appear to have had a noticeable impact on the outcome of most Anglo-Norman sieges. Although comparing the length of sieges welcomes a host of interpretive issues, it is notable that, of the sieges between 1150 and 1225 that occurred over a describable period of time, neither their duration nor their success seems to have been significantly influenced by the development of increasingly powerful artillery.

111

112 113

114

Roger of Wendover may have identified counterweight trebuchets as petrariae since his first mention of mangonella in 1217. This would fit with differentiations drawn by William of Tyre and William the Breton between the larger petrariae and smaller mangonelli. William of Tyre, Chronicon 8.13, ed. Huygens, 1:403; William the Breton, Philippide 7, ed. Delaborde, p. 202. Amt, “Besieging Bedford,” p. 111. These stones are similar in size to those used by traction trebuchets in the Levant during the late thirteenth century, much smaller than those used by breaching artillery at that time, Fulton, “Development of Prefabricated Artillery,” pp. 66–71. The values for both engine types have been confirmed through trials with reconstructed engines, Tarver, “The Traction Trebuchet,” pp. 161–62; Hansen, “Experimental Reconstruction,” p. 203.

Anglo-Norman Artillery

25

Conclusions No clear and consistent lexicon was used by Anglo-Norman narrative sources to identify artillery during this period. Throughout the late eleventh century and early twelfth, artillery was generally referred to with nonspecific terms such as machinae and ingenia. In the late twelfth century, variants of the terms petraria and mangonellus were employed with increasing regularity. There is little to suggest what differentiated these machines in the eyes of most chroniclers, and some clearly used such terms as synonyms. As artillery continued to develop, traditional vocabulary seems to have been used to identify the earliest counterweight trebuchets before a unique term for such gained broad acceptance. Sources appear to have used more consistent terminology to differentiate between various types of artillery from the early thirteenth century. There was little standardisation, however, and different terms were used by different authors to identify the same engine types. Accordingly, the petraria mentioned by Roger of Wendover at Dover in 1216 may have been the same engine as the trebuket/tribuclietta found in other sources, and the petraria mentioned at Bedford in the Annales de Dunstaplia may be associated with the mangonelli, rather than with the petrariae, found in the subsequent chancery writ. More generally, Roger of Wendover’s integration of the term mangonellus seems to be connected with the concurrent appearance of variants of “trebuchet” in other sources. It is possible that he uses this term to identify lighter engines, distinguishing them from counterweight trebuchets, to which he continued to apply the term petraria. This would appear to have been the case at Dover and may have been so at Bedford. Although the study of Anglo-Norman artillery is made difficult by the absence of a consistent lexicon, certain trends are discernible in the narrative sources. Although the scale of traction trebuchets remained relatively unchanged between the late eleventh century and early thirteenth, the significance of these engines grew. The increasing use of terms specific to artillery, such as petraria and mangonellus, suggests that the value of these engines rose: as armies became more organised, they employed artillery more effectively. This led those who recounted the events of a given siege to emphasise the role of such engines, ultimately reflected in the chronicles of the clerics who recorded these accounts for posterity. Finally, artillery technology developed gradually. The consistent manner in which the sources discuss these machines suggests that there were neither any great engineering leaps nor the introduction of drastically advanced foreign technologies. The evident similarities between the engines employed by the crusaders and Muslims at Jerusalem (1099), Lisbon (1147) and Acre (1191) confirm how widespread knowledge of artillery was throughout this period. With the development of the counterweight trebuchet, the heaviest engines would continue to grow from the late twelfth century onwards, complementing, rather than replacing, lighter traction engines. The heaviest counterweight trebuchets were still not effective breaching weapons in the early thirteenth century. The development of such weaponry would emerge later.

Michael S. Fulton

26

Appendix 1. Sieges with discernible lengths (1150–1225) Year

Siege

Aggressor

Length (weeks)

Outcome

1153

Vernon

Louis VII of France

2

failed

1173

Verneuil

Louis VII of France

4

failed

1173

Dol

Henry II of England

1

successful

1174

Rouen

Louis VII of France

4

failed

1175

Châtillon

Richard (I) of England

8

successful

1189

Le Mans

Philip II of France

1

successful

1192

Darum

Richard I of England

1

successful

1194

Nottingham

Richard I of England

1

successful

1202

Arques

Philip II of France

2

failed

1203-4

Gaillard

Philip II of France

29?

successful

1204-5

Chinon

Philip II of France

32?

successful

1206

Montaubon

John of England

2

successful

1215

Rochester

John of England

7

successful

1216

Winchester

Louis (VIII) of France

4?

successful

1216

Odiham

Louis (VIII) of France

1

successful

1216

Dover

Louis (VIII) of France

13

failed

1216

Windsor

Barons of England

8

failed

1216

Hertford

Louis (VIII) of France

4

successful

1217

Dover

Louis (VIII) of France

1

failed

1221

Bytham

Henry III of England

1

successful

1218

Newark

Henry III of England

1

failed

1221

Biham

Henry III of England

1

successful

1225

Bedford

Henry III of England

8

successful

Anglo-Norman Artillery

27

Appendix 2. Possible References to Artillery in the Anglo-Norman Realm (1100–1220) Year

Site

Use (offensive / defensive)

Term

Source

Robert of Bellême

machinae

JW

machinae

RH

machinae

WC

machinae

JW

machinae

RH

machinae

WC

machinae

OV

machinae

GS

machinae

HH

machinae

RH

machinae

WC

machinae

GS

balistae, aliae machinae machinae

RX

machinae, nova instrumenta ingenia

RX

machinae

GS

balistae

GS

machinae

GS

machinae

GS

balistae, machinae

GS

machinae

OV

balistae, machinae

GS

machinae

WM

First Crusade 1101–2

1102

Bellême castles

Bridgenorth

1123

Pontaudemer

1136

Exeter

1137–38

Bedford

1138

Wark (Carrum)

1138

Norham

1138

Wark (Carrum)

1138

Bristol

1138

Castle-Cary

1139

Corfe

1139

Trowbridge

1140

Hereford

1140–41

Lincoln

1142

Wareham

Henry I of England

Henry I of England Stephen of England

Stephen of England William Fitz Duncan David I of Scotland David I of Scotland Robert of Gloucester Stephen of England Stephen of England Stephen of England Geoffrey Talbot, et al. Stephen of England Robert of Gloucester

RX

JW

(Continued)

Michael S. Fulton

28 Year

Site

Use (offensive / defensive)

Term

Source

1142

Oxford

machinae

GS

1143

Tetbury

machinae

GS

1144

Rouen

machinae

RT

1145

Farringdon

Stephen of England Stephen England Geoffrey of Anjou Stephen of England

machinae

GS

Stephen of England Louis VII of France Roland of Dinan

perrier(e)

HW

machinae

RT

machinae

RT

Louis VII of France

machinae bellicae

BP

machinae bellicae

RH

machinae, machinae bellicae machinae

WC

machinae

RT

perrariae, machinae bellicae perariae, machinae bellicae perrariae, machinae bellicae mangunel, periere

BP

perieres, enginz

JF

machinae

WN

perrariae, machinae suae bellicae machinae suas bellicas machinis, instrumenta bellica perariae, machinae suae bellicae

BP

of

Second Crusade 1152

Newbury

1153

Vernon

1168

Bécherel

1173

Verneuil

1173

Château-Neuf

1173

Dol

1174

Wark

1174

Rouen

Louis VII of France Henry II of England

Ralph of Fougères, et al. William I of Scotland Louis VII of France

WN

RH WC JF

RH RW (MP) WC

Anglo-Norman Artillery

29

Year

Site

Use (offensive / defensive)

Term

Source

1175

Chatillon

Richard of Poitou

machinae suae bellicae machinae suae bellicae machinae suae bellicae machina, petraria, Mangonellus Turcorum more

BP

1185

Boves

Philip II of France

RH WC

WB

1185

Neath

Welsh

machina

AM

1189

Le Mans

Philip II of France

machinae

BP

machinae

RH

machinae

WC

1191

Lincoln

machinae

RW

William Longchamp

machinae

WN

Philip II of France

perrariae

RH

petrariae, mangonelli, ingenia petrariae, machinae

RG

petrariae

RW

machinae

CM

perariae, machinae suae bellicae petrariae, manginelli petrariae, manginelli machinae, petrariae

RH

perr(i)éres

HW

machinae

RW (MP)

petrariae, mangonelli petraria, mangonelli machinae, petrariae

RG

Third Crusade 1193

1194

Rouen

Verneuil

1194

Nottingham

1194

Vaudreuil

1196

Nonencort

1202

Arques

1203

Vaudreuil

1203–4

Gaillard

Philip II of France

Richard I of England Philip II of France Philip II of France Philip II of France Philip II of France Philip II of France

RD

RG RG RW (MP)

WB GA (Continued)

Michael S. Fulton

30 Year

Site

Use (offensive / defensive)

Term

Source

Roger de Lacy

petraria, mangonellus petrariae, mangonelli

WB

Philip II of France Philip II of France John of England

grant engien

HD

perrieres, mangonniaus petrariae

HD

GA

1204

Niort (Nyors)

1205

Chinon

1206

Montaubon

1214

Novent

John of England

petrariae

RW (MP)

1214

(transported)

machinae

RW (MP)

1214

‘Reupeforti’

Philip II of France John of England

GA

1214

(transported)

John of England

1215

Rochester

John of England

petrariae, machine bellicae petrariae, mangonelli petrariae, machinae

RW (MP)

mangonniaus

HD HD

RW (MP)

GA

1216

Winchester

Louis of France

1216

Odiham

Louis of France

perrieres, mangouniaus machinae

1216

Dover

Louis of France

petraria, machinae

RW (MP)

machinae

RC

perrieres, mongouniaus machinae

HD

machinae

RW (MP)

perriere

HD

1216

Windsor

Herve of Nevers et al.

RW (MP)

RC

1216

Hertford

Louis of France

machinae

RW (MP)

1216

Berkhampstead

Louis of France

RW

1217

Dover

Louis of France

petrariae, belli machinae tribuclietta, machinae trebuket, trebouket, trebucet trebuchez machinae

RW (MP)

mangonella, petrariae trebuchoent, mangonels, per(r)ieres petrariae

RW

(transported)

Louis of France

1217

Mountsorel

1217

Lincoln

Ranulf of Chester et al. Thomas of Perche et al.

1218

Newark

Henry III

AD HD HW

HW

RW (MP)

Anglo-Norman Artillery

31

Sources AD

Annales prioratus de Dunstaplia, ed. H. R. Luard, in Annales Monastici, vol. 3 (London, 1866)

AM

Annales de Margan, in Annales monastici, vol. 1 (London, 1864)

BP

Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta regis Henrici secundi and Gesta regis Ricardi, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1867)

CM

Chronica de Mailros, ed. J. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1835)

CN

Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. F. Michel, 3 vols. (Paris, 1836–44)

GA

William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti, ed. H.-F. Delaborde, in Oeuvres de Rigord et Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, vol. 2 (Paris, 1882)

GS

Gesta Stephani, ed. K. R. Potter (London, 1976)

HD

Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris, 1840)

HH

Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. T. Arnold (London, 1879)

HW

History of William Marshal, ed. A. J. Holden, 3 vols. (London, 2002–6)

JF

Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vol. 3 (London, 1886)

JW

John of Worcester, Chronica chronicarum, ed. McGurk, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1998)

MP

Matthew Paris, Chronica maiora, ed. H. R. Luard (London, 1872–83)

OV

Orderic Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1969–80)

RC

Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (London, 1875)

RD

Ralph of Diceto, Ymagines historiarum, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1876)

RG

Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti, ed. H.-F. Delaborde, in Oeuvres de Rigord et Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, vol. 1 (Paris, 1882)

RH

Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols. (London, 1868–71)

RT

Robert of Torigni, Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vol. 4 (London, 1889)

RW

Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. G. Hewlett, 3 vols. (London, 1886–89)

RX

Richard of Hexham, De gestis regis Stephani, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vol. 3 (London, 1886)

WB

William the Breton, Philippidos libri XII, ed. H.-F. Delaborde, in Oeuvres de Rigord et Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, vol. 1 (Paris, 1885)

WC

Walter of Coventry, Memoriale fratris Walteri de Coventria, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1872–73)

WM

William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum and Historia novella, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1887–89)

WN

William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, vols. 1–2 (London, 1884–85)

2 Imperial Policy and Military Practice in the Plantagenet Dominions, c. 1337–c. 14531 David Green

At the outbreak of the Hundred Years War in 1337 the Plantagenet dominions, in addition to England, comprised Gascony, Wales, parts of Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and, theoretically, Scotland. The war would add to these lordships. Calais and its March were conquered in 1347; in 1360 the Treaty of Brétigny appended extensive lands to the duchy of Gascony, creating the short-lived principality of Aquitaine; Normandy was captured between 1417 and 1419; and the 1420 Treaty of Troyes established control over Paris and much of northern France. This paper explores distinctions and common features in certain matters of policy and military practice that were applied throughout these dominions during the period of the Hundred Years War. In so doing it draws on a small area in the remarkably rich field of medieval military scholarship which has flourished so abundantly over the last twenty years or so. The quality and scale of this remarkable growth is in no small part due to the work of members of De re militari. For so long, military history was to be found in a niche area of scholarship, and rather a narrow niche at that, but the importance of medieval warfare and the medieval soldier, both in specific terms and in the ways in which it and they impacted upon political, diplomatic, and cultural affairs more widely, is now largely accepted.2 This subject is, however, one shaped by historiographical divisions as well as developments, because it is, with certain notable exceptions, only relatively

1

2

I am very grateful to Kelly DeVries for the invitation to deliver the 2015 Journal of Medieval Military History Annual Lecture to De re militari at the International Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo. Thanks are also due to Cliff Rogers for his helpful and generous comments as a respondent to the lecture, on which this paper is based, and to the anonymous reader for the JMMH. The development of the Journal of Medieval Military History, published since 2002 by Boydell and Brewer and edited by Bernard S. Bachrach, Clifford J. Rogers, Kelly DeVries, and John France, is one of the clearest manifestations of this development in medieval military scholarship. See also http://www.deremilitari.org. For a brief overview of these developments see David Simpkin and Andy King, “Introduction: Developments in Late Medieval Military History and the Historiography of Anglo-Scottish Warfare,” in England and Scotland at War, c.1296–c.1513, ed. Andy King and David Simpkin (Leiden, 2012), 1–14.

34

David Green

recently that scholars of the later Middle Ages have begun to think in holistic terms of the relationship between England and her dominions in France, Britain, and Ireland. Instead, work involving the various and, in some ways, disparate Plantagenet lordships has tended to comprise two – often distinct – areas of inquiry. These may be categorised, somewhat simplistically, as, first, insular studies, sometimes called the “New British History,” a term used to describe the collective analysis of Britain, Ireland, and the surrounding smaller islands – what J. A. Pocock called the Atlantic archipelago (and which he conceived as a subcontinental island group).3 And, second, considerations of Anglo-French relations, chiefly concerned with the origins and conduct of the Hundred Years War. As a result of this we are faced with two distinctive historiographical traditions that overlap thematically but exist, nonetheless, semi-independently of one another.4 Furthermore, there also remains a small yet significant chronological divide which separates the periods before and after the Lancastrian usurpation of 1399. While this is a less marked division than that which is said to indicate the end of the Middle Ages (c. 1485/c. 1500), it is important, nonetheless, and has influenced approaches to these subjects. Fortunately, students and scholars of military history have been less constrained by such artificial divisions. The Hundred Years War, of course, straddles the chronological frontier even though a number of the conflict’s characteristics changed in the fifteenth century. More significantly, many of the key points of intersection between insular studies and the Anglo-French tradition were military in nature. They may be found in major issues of politics and international diplomacy such as the various roles Scotland, Scottish troops, and policy makers played in the Hundred Years War.5 Hostility north and south of the “Border” (a suggestive term in this context) has long been recognised as important in exacerbating AngloFrench tensions in the prelude to the Hundred Years War. Indeed, the chronicler Henry Knighton (d. c. 1396) tells us that the war began because Edward III (r. 1327–77) “had been at such pains to humiliate the Scots.”6 Michael Brown is surely correct when observing that the war “provides a much stronger framework for consideration of the English and Scottish polities than did their relationships across the British Isles.”7 Wales also played an important role in the struggle, with

3 4

5

6 7

J. G. A. Pocock, “British History: A Plea for a New Subject,” The Journal of Modern History 47 (1975), p. 606. David Green, “The Hundred Years War, Colonial Policy and the English Lordships,” in The Hundred Years War (Part III): Further Considerations, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2013), pp. 237–38. See also Peter Crooks, “State of the Union: Perspectives on English Imperialism in the Late Middle Ages,” Past and Present 212 (2011), p. 9. J. Campbell, “England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century,” in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Hale, R. Highfied, and B. Smalley (London, 1965), pp. 184–216; Norman Macdougall, An Antidote to the English: The Auld Alliance, 1295–1560 (East Linton, 2001), pp. 28–96. Knighton’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. G. F. Martin (Oxford, 1995), p. 3. Michael Brown, Disunited Kingdoms: Peoples and Politics in the British Isles, 1280–1460 (Harlow, 2013), pp. 5–6.

Imperial Policy and Military Practice, c. 1337–c. 1453

35

soldiers taking up arms in the service of both Plantagenet and Valois rulers: thousands of troops were recruited for Edward III’s early campaigns, and there were several professional military companies that served in French ranks in the middle stages of the conflict.8 Ireland, too, was significant, despite its less direct involvement in the Anglo-French war. It provided a source of manpower for English armies, albeit a small one, and there is no doubt that the ebb and flow of English military commitments across the Channel had a major impact on the nature of politics on the other side of the Irish Sea.9 This, however, is not an attempt to denigrate insular studies. The (no longer) “New British History” has reshaped fundamentally our conception of Britain and Ireland and the interrelationships between their constituent nations and regions in the period from the end of the eleventh century to the start of the fourteenth. Just as significantly, it can play a vital role in aiding our understanding of English political attitudes and Plantagenet policies implemented elsewhere, notably in France. It has, however, rarely been applied to the period of the Hundred Years War. By the time the war began, so Rees Davies taught us, the tide had turned on what he termed The First English Empire.10 Following a period of intense Anglicisation, political and cultural, within Britain and Ireland, implemented most forcibly during Edward I’s reign (1272–1307), different priorities emerged, shaped by local conditions and the increasingly voracious demands of the Anglo-French conflict. As a result, studies of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have tended to focus on individual nations or on bi-lateral relations between two nations. There are, of course, exceptions to this “rule” to be found in important works by Steven Ellis, Alexander Grant, Ralph Griffiths, Brendan Smith, and the godfather of such comparative studies, John Le Patourel. In a series of articles and books Le Patourel was perhaps the first to conceptualise the Plantagenets’ territorial possessions, wherever they were held, as a partially unified political system. As early as 1965 he noted that the government of the various lands under Plantagenet control (Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Normandy, Aquitaine, England, Brittany, Ponthieu, Calais, Wales, parts of Ireland, and, briefly, parts of Scotland) had each been the subject of a great deal of study but the notion that they formed a governmental unit or, indeed, a unit of any kind

8

9

10

A. D. Carr, “Welshmen and the Hundred Years’ War,” Welsh History Review 4 (1968), 21–46; Adam Chapman, “Wales, Welshmen, and the Hundred Years War,” in Hundred Years War (Part III), ed. Villalon and Kagay, pp. 217–32; M. Siddons, “Welshmen in the Service of France,” Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 36 (1989), 161–84. J. A. Watt, “The Irish Colony under Strain, 1327–99,” in A New History of Ireland, Volume II: Medieval Ireland 1169–1534, ed. Art Cosgrove (Oxford, 1987), pp. 374–97; Art Cosgrove, “England and Ireland, 1399–1447,” ibid., pp. 525–32; Robin Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 153–56. R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), esp. pp. 172–90. See also Brendan Smith, “Lordship in the British Isles, c. 1320–c. 1360: The Ebb Tide of the English Empire,” in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Rees Davies, ed. Huw Pryce and John Watts (Oxford, 2007), pp. 153–63.

36

David Green

for a significant duration had rarely been suggested nor explored in any detail.11 Subsequently, Robin Frame extended the chronological parameters of insular studies up until 1400, and he also argued for the need to expand the geographical area of consideration. After evaluating the political evolution of the British Isles and Ireland as a whole, the next step should be to include the Plantagenets’ French estates in the analysis.12 This was necessary, he believed, because English continental ambitions, expressed in the Hundred Years War, directly influenced the tenor of Anglo-Celtic relations.13 In essence, Plantagenet aspirations in France (re)defined and intensified a sense of English national identity that in turn led to a greater awareness of political, cultural, and social differences between England and her neighbours in Britain and Ireland. Works on national identities, of which there have been several, have recognised the importance of warfare and military affairs in nation-building both conceptually and in terms of the construction of governmental structures.14 Many of these

11

12

13

14

S. G. Ellis, “From Dual Monarchy to Multiple Kingdoms: Unions and the English State, 1422–1607,” in The Stuart Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Allan I. MacInness and Jane H. Ohlmeyer (Dublin, 2002), pp. 330–40; Alexander Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (Edinburgh, 1991); R. A. Griffiths, “The Island of England in the Fifteenth Century: Perceptions of the Peoples of the British Isles,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003), 177–200; see the essays collected in John Le Patourel, Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet, ed. Michael Jones (London, 1984). With regard to two of the most significant lordships, Robin Frame remarked, “The political histories of Gascony and Ireland have been explored in some detail : : : and each has been separately related to the financial and political crises that occurred in England as a result of the Hundred Years War. [He was referring specifically to the period immediately following the reopening of the struggle in 1369.] There is, however, room to consider them together, in the setting of the Plantagenet lands as a whole.” “Overlordship and Reaction, c. 1200–c. 1450,” in Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, ed. Alexander Grant and Keith Stringer (London, 1995), pp. 77–78, 80. This approach was adopted by David Green in “Lordship and Principality: Colonial Policy in Ireland and Aquitaine in the 1360s,” Journal of British Studies 47 (2008), 3–29. See also Robin Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100–1400 (Oxford, 1995); and Robin Frame, “Exporting State and Nation: Being English in Medieval Ireland,” in Power and the Nation in European History, ed. Len Scales and Oliver Zimmer (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 143–65. R. R. Davies, “The English State and the ‘Celtic’ Peoples, 1100–1400,” Journal of Historical Sociology 6 (1993), pp. 12–13; R. A. Griffiths, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1991), pp. 33–53; Sean Duffy, “The British Perspective,” in A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages, ed. S. H. Rigby (Oxford, 2003), pp. 165–82; W. Mark Ormrod, “Edward III and his Family,” Journal of British Studies 26 (1987), 398–422. See, for example, C. T. Allmand, “National Reconciliation in France at the End of the Hundred Years War,” Journal of Medieval Military History 5 (2008), 149–64; Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France, trans. Susan R. Huston, ed. Frederic L. Cheyette (Berkeley, 1991), esp. pp. 158–66; Ardis Butterfield, The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language and Nation in the Hundred Years War (Oxford, 2009), pp. 17–24, 111–43, 311–16; David Green, “National Identities in the Hundred Years War,” in Fourteenth Century England 6, ed. Chris Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2010), 115–30; Andrea Ruddick, English Identity and Political Culture in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 18–20, 23–30.

Imperial Policy and Military Practice, c. 1337–c. 1453

37

studies also highlight regional cohesion and/or variations within the British Isles, Ireland, and France which the Hundred Years War fabricated or amplified. Indeed, the French apanages such as Brittany15 and Burgundy16 created, in part, by and because of the war provide intriguing case studies of identity development in this period. So, too, do those idiosyncratic areas such as Gascony,17 Normandy,18 Navarre,19 and Flanders,20 which each manifested a distinct identity while being torn between more powerful polities seeking to draw them into their respective national orbits. Some similar forces can be seen at play in those semi-autonomous territories within England and off its coastline – areas such as the palatinate of Cheshire,21 the bishopric of Durham,22 and the Channel Islands. As Tim

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Among many works by Michael Jones see “‘Mon Pais et ma Nation’: Breton Identity in the Fourteenth Century,” in War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. T. Allmand (Liverpool, 1976), pp. 144–68; and “Brittany and Wales in the Middle Ages: Contacts and Comparisons,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymrodorion, n.s., 11 (2004), 19–49. M. G. A. Vale, “England and the Burgundian Dominions: Some Cultural Influences and Comparisons,” in L’Angleterre et les pays bourguignons: relations et comparaisons, ed. J.-M. Cauchies (Neuchâtel, 1995), pp. 7–13. Robin Harris, Valois Guyenne: A Study of Politics, Government and Society in Late Medieval France (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 3–11, 109–13, 137–38, 152–56; Margaret Wade Labarge, Gascony: England’s First Colony, 1204–1453 (London, 1980), pp. 117ff; Guilhem Pépin, “Petitions from Gascony: Testimonies of a Special Relationship,” in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. Gwilym Dodd, Anthony Musson, and W. Mark Ormrod (York, 2009), pp. 120–34; Andrea Ruddick, “Gascony and the Limits of Medieval British Isles History,” in Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Robin Frame, ed. Brendan Smith (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 68–88; M. G. A. Vale, English Gascony, 1399–1453: A Study of War, Government and Politics during the Later Stages of the Hundred Years’ War (Oxford, 1970), esp. pp. 1–10, 154–215. C. T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450: The History of a Medieval Occupation (Oxford, 1983), esp. pp. 81–104, 241–67; Philippe Contamine, “The Norman ‘Nation’ and the French ‘Nation’ in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. David Bates and Anne Curry (London, 1994), pp. 215–34. Roland Delachenal, Histoire de Charles V, 5 vols. (Paris, 1909–31), 1:73–91, 115–19, 440–43, 450–52; 2:1–11, 20–24, 120–28, 420–32; Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. II: Trial by Fire (London, 1999), pp. 102–42; idem, The Hundred Years War, vol. III: Divided Houses (London, 2009), pp. 333–40. J. Van Herwaarden, “The War in the Low Countries,” in Froissart: Historian, ed. J. J. N. Palmer (Woodbridge, 1981), 101–17; J. J. N. Palmer, “England, France, the Papacy and the Flemish Succession, 1361–9,” Journal of Medieval History 2 (1976), 339–64. Michael J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 5–52, 67–89, 162–91; Philip J. Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277–1403 (Manchester, 1987), esp. pp. 149–84. Mark Arvanigian, “The Durham Gentry and the Scottish March, 1370–1400: County Service in Late Medieval England,” Northern History 42 (2005), 257–73; Christian D. Liddy, The Bishopric of Durham in the Late Middle Ages: Lordship, Community and the Cult of St Cuthbert (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 76–123; Tim Thornton, “Fifteenth-Century Durham and the Problem of Provincial Liberties in England and the Wider Territories of the English Crown,” TRHS 6th series 11 (2001), 83–100.

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Thornton has noted, a characteristic of the “New British History” has been to view relationships within the Plantagenet lordships in terms of English central imperatives and imperial expansion versus regional and national resistance in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Because of this, those areas without a “national” historiographical tradition such as the Channel Islands have often been excluded from the debate.23 The Hundred Years War provides a context within which the roles and mutual relationships of such areas can be examined and compared constructively. Again, it is the case that many scholars of military history have not felt restricted in this way, or have recognised the permeability of national and regional frontiers, not least because their dramatis personae – soldiers, military governors, and others – ranged across such wide territorial areas. Members of the royal family with military concerns played out their lives on a broad canvas, and similarly geographically diverse careers can be found among those of lesser social status. We can think of individuals such as Henry of Grosmont (c. 1310–61), Thomas Rokeby (d. 1357), and John Talbot (c. 1387–1453). Collectively, these men served in Brittany, Gascony, Ireland, the Low Countries, Normandy, Paris, Scotland and Wales and their respective borderlands, and also held various offices elsewhere in England and France.24 Their experiences took in the Plantagenet dominions, both insular and continental, almost in their entirety. Broader prosopographical analyses have also demonstrated the huge scope of some less prominent medieval careers. Among these the project on “The Soldier in Later Medieval England,” directed by Anne Curry, is of particular importance from a military perspective. It reveals “One of the most distinctive features of military service in the late fourteenth century [to have been] the geographical range of activity.”25 Furthermore, although it diminished over the course of this period, an international chivalric ethos bound sections of the military aristocracy together in spite of national disputes and regional entrenchments.26 Membership of the new military orders, a vibrant tournament culture, and common service in the crusades continued to link the European secular elite as did a sense of fellowship linked

23 24

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Tim Thornton, The Channel Islands, 1370–1640: Between England and Normandy (Woodbridge, 2012), p. 7. Kenneth A. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London, 1969); Robin Frame, “Thomas Rokeby, Sheriff of Yorkshire, Justiciar of Ireland,” Peritia 10 (1996), 274–96; Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, “Ireland in the 1350s: Sir Thomas de Rokeby and his Successors,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 4th series 97 (1967), 47–59; A. J. Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France 1427–1453 (rev. ed. Barnsley, 2005). “The Soldier in Later Medieval England”: http://www.medievalsoldier.org/; Adrian Bell, Anne Curry, Andy King, and David Simpkin, The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 2013), p. 123. For recent considerations of this see David Green, The Hundred Years War: A People’s History (New Haven, 2014), pp. 23–42; and Craig Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013), esp. pp. 19–53.

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to knighthood and nobility. One of the best known examples of such links and their practical manifestation can be seen during the Crécy campaign of 1346 when Raoul de Brienne, constable of France (and count of Eu and Guines, d. 1350) and Jean de Melun, count of Tancarville (d. 1382) defended Caen against the forces of Edward III. Once the English army entered and began to ransack the town, Froissart tells us, the Constable and the Count began to fear that they might be drawn into [the truly horrible carnage which was taking place] and fall into the hands of archers who did not know who they were. While they were watching the massacre in dismay, they caught sight of a gallant English knight with only one eye, called Sir Thomas Holland : : : They recognized him because they had campaigned together in Granada and Prussia and on other expeditions, in the way in which knights do meet each. They were much relieved when they saw him and called out to him as he passed : : : When he heard [them] Sir Thomas was delighted, not only because he could save their lives but also because their capture meant an excellent day’s work and a fine haul of valuable prisoners.27

As this suggests, the international ransom market experienced something of a golden age in this period. It has been explored by Rémy Ambühl, Chris GivenWilson, and others, and their work reveals that aristocratic links of this nature continued to exist throughout the war, even though they sometimes lessened as it progressed with the result that captors did not always treat their prisoners with the care which chivalric tradition prescribed.28 Literary texts, many of a military character, also circulated, and some authors journeyed extensively, crossing social and political frontiers in search of patronage and inspiration.29 Travels such as these could take authors beyond the borders of Britain and France, although not necessarily beyond the reach of the Hundred Years War – many subsidiary areas in Flanders, Italy, and the Iberian peninsula were drawn into the orbit of the conflict and the impact of those

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Froissart’s Chronicles, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Brereton (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 75. Rémy Ambühl, Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013), esp. pp. 31–38; Chris Given-Wilson and Françoise Bériac-Lainé, Les prisonniers de la bataille de Poitiers (Paris, 2002), esp. pp. 108–26. For example: Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronica, 1272–1363, ed. and trans. Andy King (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. lvi–lviii; The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context and Translation, ed. and trans. Richard W. Kaueper and Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 18–28; Christine de Pizan, The Book of Peace, ed. and trans. Karen Green, Constant J. Mews, and Janice Pinder (Philadelphia, 2008), pp. 5–21, 41; Christine de Pizan, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, ed. Charity Cannon Willard, trans. Sumner Willard (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 1–9; C. T. Allmand, “Fifteenth-Century Versions of Vegetius’ De Re Militari,” in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. Matthew Strickland (Stamford, 1998), 30–45. On Chaucer’s career and possible connections with Ireland see Rory McTurk, Chaucer and the Norse and Celtic Worlds (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 34–66. On Froissart’s patrons see Peter Ainsworth, “Jean Froissart: Chronicler, Poet and Writer,” The Online Froissart, ed. Peter Ainsworth and Godfried Croenen, version 1.5 (Sheffield: HRI Online, 2013) http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/onlinefroissart; G. T. Diller, “Froissart: Patrons and Texts,” in Froissart: Historian, ed. Palmer, pp. 145–60.

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regions on the struggle and their contribution to the Anglo-French war have been explored very effectively in the three volumes edited by Donald Kagay and Andrew Villalon.30 And yet, despite the fact that the impact of the Anglo-French struggle was felt throughout Britain and Ireland, if unevenly, the Hundred Years War has retained its own historiographical space.31 This particularism is understandable, given some characteristics of the conflict, and yet it can be seen as almost perverse, given that the war was driven, in part at least, by the Plantagenets’ wish to retain the remnants of their Angevin inheritance in France and regain that which had been lost. Whether or not the French Crown was a driving ambition for the English at particular times in the struggle, English war aims were, surely, shaped by a general awareness of the loss of “imperial” territories in France, both Norman and Angevin. Malcolm Vale drew our attention to the Angevin antecedents of the struggle,32 and Mark Ormrod has shown the continuing allure of those and the family’s other ancestral territories for Edward III, especially in the 1350s and 1360s, not only in France but elsewhere in Britain and Ireland.33 Anne Curry and others have noted a similar appeal for Henry V (r. 1413–22).34 According to the Gesta Henrici Quinti, the 1415 Normandy campaign was driven, in part, by England’s historic (and divine) claim to the duchy. The king, it said, was compelled to act following “a ruling from the Supreme Judge” because otherwise he faced a “perpetual disinheritance” of his estates in France which had been usurped and withheld from him.35 Because of the continuing importance of these ancestral associations there would seem to be obvious points of comparison between the territories to which the Plantagenets laid claim across the Channel and those in Britain and Ireland. However, questions undoubtedly remain over the extent to which those territories were viewed as similar by the Plantagenets, were treated similarly, or were administered collectively. This is reflected in uncertainty and debate regarding the appropriate terminology for the dominia transmarinia – the king’s lands other than England. Should the constituent elements be considered lordships, colonies,

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L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay, eds., The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus (Leiden, 2004); idem, The Hundred Years War (Part II): Different Vistas (Leiden, 2008); idem, Hundred Years War (Part III). Brown, Disunited Kingdoms, pp. 4–6. M. G. A. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy 1250–1340 (Oxford, repr. 2000). W. Mark Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, 2011), pp. 414–45. G. L. Harriss, “Introduction: The Exemplar of Kingship,” in Henry V: The Practice of Kingship, ed. G. L. Harriss (Oxford, 1985), p. 29; Anne Curry, “Lancastrian Normandy: The Jewel in the Crown?” in England and Normandy, ed. Bates and Curry, pp. 241–52. Gesta Henrici Quinti: The Deeds of Henry V, ed. and trans. J. S. Roskell and F. Taylor (Oxford, 1975), p. 15; J. J. N. Palmer, “The War Aims of the Protagonists and the Negotiations for Peace,” in The Hundred Years War, ed. Kenneth Fowler (London, 1971), pp. 54–55.

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or dominions?36 Were the Plantagenets perhaps adopting a policy mirroring the Valois model? John Hardyng (1378–1465) commented that both Normandy and Gascony were possessions akin to the French royal apanages: “And Normandy and Guyan as appent remayn should to him [Henry V] and his heyres.”37 If, however, the terminology should reflect the precise nature of the relationship between each territory and the English crown, is any generic title appropriate? Indeed, there is a danger here that if we adopt a holistic approach which considers the Plantagenets’ dominions within the British archipelago as directly comparable to those from continental Europe we ignore significant differences between those estates. As Peter Crooks has noted, the territories were far from heterogeneous, with varying relationships to England. They had clear differences in law, custom, and status, and administrative practices were fragmented.38 Some disparities were particularly marked. Gascony had been in English control for nearly two hundred years when the Anglo-French war began. It has been described as England’s first colony, and yet, unlike Wales and Ireland, it experienced little settlement by the English and no sustained attempts to construct a society on an English model. Nor did it experience the imposition of a new ruling class, something again evident in Wales and parts of Ireland.39 It would not be easy to impose a cohesive “imperial policy” or implement a common military strategy in areas which differed to such an extent topographically, socially, politically, and in their historical relationships with the Plantagenets. Yet, if the Hundred Years War was, from an English perspective, an attempt to reconstitute the Angevin Empire in some form, then the territories in France surely must be thought of as part of the same collective as those in Britain and Ireland. The question of whether “empire” is an appropriate designation for this collection of lordships is perhaps even more contentious. Despite the claims of English monarchs to be emperors in their kingdom (rex in regno suo imperator est) in accordance with Roman Law, there was no collective noun to describe the wider realm in such imperial terms.40 Philippe de Mézières (c. 1327–1405) 36 37

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See R. R. Davies, “Lordship or Colony?,” in The English in Medieval Ireland, ed. James F. Lydon (Dublin, 1984), 142–60. The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (repr. New York, 1974), p. 379. See also Robin Frame, “English Policies and Anglo-Irish Attitudes in the Crisis of 1341–1342,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven, ed. James F. Lydon (Dublin, 1981), p. 96. He noted that Edward III hoped Lionel of Clarence’s Irish lands “would form a significant part of an apanage of a cadet branch of his own family.” Peter Crooks, “Before Humpty Dumpty: The First English Empire and the Brittleness of Bureaucracy, 1259–1453,” in Empires and Bureaucracy from Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, ed. Peter Crooks and T. H. Parsons (forthcoming Cambridge, 2016), pp. 355–56. Labarge, Gascony: England’s First Colony; Robin Frame, “Overlordship and Reaction, c. 1200–c. 1450,” Ireland and Britain, 1170–1450 (London, 1998), pp. 77–78; James F. Lydon, “Ireland and the English Crown, 1171–1541,” Irish Historical Studies 29 (1995), p. 294. For a consideration of various aspects of the Plantagenet dominions, including the suitability of the term “empire,” see Peter Crooks, David Green, and W. Mark Ormrod, eds., The Plantagenet Empire, 1259–1453: Proceedings of the 2014 Harlaxton Symposium (Donnington, forthcoming

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may have addressed Richard II (r. 1377–99) as the “excellent King of Great Britain” (tresexcellent roy de la Grant Bretaingne) in his Letter of 1395, but no monarch claimed an imperial title.41 Indeed, it would have been difficult to make such a claim explicit, given the close links between a number of “true” emperors and the Plantagenets, such as Edward III’s position as vicar-general to Lewis of Bavaria (1338–41), and Henry V’s friendship with “the most superillustrious prince, Sigismund, king of Hungary, the emperor.”42 John Le Patourel, of course, did conceive of England’s collective continental and insular possessions in imperial terms, although not necessarily for the entirety of the Hundred Years War. With regard to the period between 1066 and some time in the fourteenth century, he believed that we should not conceive of England and France as traditional “national” units but as parts of “a ‘greater Angevin empire’ [which] retain[ed] its identity through periods of growth, transformation and decline.”43 If correct, there are, then, good reasons to think in “imperial” terms, although we should certainly not think of this Plantagenet Empire as “a reified or stable entity” – Henry V’s authority within his diverse lordships and vision of his realm differed considerably from that of Edward III, and still more from those of Richard II or Henry VI (r. 1422–61 / 1470–71).44 Nonetheless, this imperial construct offers something rather more than just a conceptual lens through which to view the diversity and interconnections of the Plantagenet dominions. Those collected territories mattered to contemporaries – certainly when they were lost or under threat. In 1450, John Gresham lamented in a letter to John Paston, “Today it is told Cherbourg is gone and we have now not a foot of land left in Normandy.”45 And, as the Yorkist manifesto of 1460 had it,

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2016). It is worth noting that imperial conceptions of royal authority on both sides of the “English” Channel contributed to the growing tension which exploded in the Hundred Years War. The relationship established by Louis IX and Henry III at the Treaty of Paris in 1259 became increasingly untenable in the face of ever-increasing claims of regal sovereignty made by both Capetian and Plantagenet lawyers: English Historical Documents, III, ed. H. Rothwell (London, 1975), pp. 376–79; Pierre Chaplais, “The Making of the Treaty of Paris (1259) and the Royal Style,” English Historical Review 67 (1952), 235–53; W. Mark Ormrod, “England, Normandy and the Beginnings of the Hundred Years War, 1259–1360,” in England and Normandy, ed. Bates and Curry, p. 198; Walter Ullmann, “This Realm of England is an Empire,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979), 175–203. Philippe de Mézières, Letter to King Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace between England and France, ed. and trans. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975), pp. 21, 93. Ormrod, Edward III, 201–3; Gesta Henrici Quinti, p. 13. John Le Patourel, “The Plantagenet Dominions,” History 50 (1965), pp. 289–90. He also noted the difficulties associated with the name “Plantagenet,” which was not used as a hereditary surname until the 15th century. See further J. S. Hamilton, The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty (London, 2010), p. 1. Peter Crooks, David Green and W. Mark Ormrod, “The Plantagenets and Empire in the Late Middle Ages,” in Plantagenet Empire (forthcoming). See also Michael J. Bennett, “Richard II and the Wider Realm,” in Richard II and the Art of Kingship, ed. Anthony Goodman and James L. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), pp. 187–204; John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 13–38. Paston Letters, ed. James Gairdner, 3 vols. (London, 1872–75), 1: no. 103.

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“enemies to the commonweal : : : have allowed all the old possessions which the king had in France and Normandy, Anjou and Maine, Gascony and Guienne, won and gained by his [Henry VI’s] father of most noble memory, and his other noble ancestors [to be] shamefully lost or sold.”46 It also seems that the movement of people within the dominions had, by this stage, given them a collective social and political identity, although this might not be expressed in a positive sense. For example, during a political crisis in 1341, the Anglo-Irish wrote to Edward III, pleading for assistance. They reminded him that “whereas various people of your allegiance, as of Scotland, Gascony and Wales often in times past have levied war against their liege lord, at all times your English liege people of Ireland have behaved themselves well and loyally.”47 In a similar fashion, when, in 1440, Parliament sought to tax those resident in England but born elsewhere it soon faced complaints from the considerable numbers of Irish, Normans, Channel Islanders, and Gascons who argued that as loyal servants of the king they should not be treated differently from Englishmen.48 As Ralph Griffiths observed, “Those who were subject to English kings formed a complex series of interlocking and interrelated communities, between them enjoying several systems of law, acknowledging different traditions and bodies of custom, and speaking a number of languages; but they also had a common identity that derived from their history, status, and treatment as the king’s subjects.”49 There may be, however, other multi-regional/international models which can be applied more appropriately to these various territories, including that most

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An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, ed. John Silvester Davies (London, 1856), pp. 86–90. Such attitudes might be recast in the latter stages of the war when mercantile interests focused on the need to maintain trading opportunities across the Irish Sea and the English Channel. See Libelle of Englyshe Polycye–A Poem on the Use of Sea Power, 1436, ed. George F. Warner (Oxford, 1926); John Scattergood, “The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: The Nation and its Place,” in Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. Helen Cooney (Dublin, 2001), pp. 28–49. Statutes and Ordinances, and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland. King John to Henry V, Henry F. Berry (Dublin, 1907), pp. 342–45. This particular incident is detailed in the records collected in the University of York project directed by W. Mark Ormrod: “England’s Immigrants,1330–1550: Resident Aliens in the Late Middle Ages”: http://www.englandsimmigrants.com. See also Anne Curry, “Introduction: Parliament of 1439–40,” Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson et al. (Woodbridge, CD-ROM, 2005); “Parliament of 1439–40: Text and Translation”, item 14, ibid. R. A. Griffiths, “The English Realm and Dominions and the King’s Subjects in the Later Middle Ages,” in Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society: Essays Presented to J. R. Lander, ed. J. G. Rowe (Toronto, 1986), pp. 84–85. See also Curry, “Lancastrian Normandy,” p. 236. She notes that the Plantagenet lordships shared or had imposed upon them a common political identity deriving from their position as lands subject to the kingdom of England (pays subgiet au royaume d’Angleterre), and those who lived in them were, by definition, the king’s subjects. For a discussion of the concept of “allegiant identity” see Ruddick, English Identity, pp. 229–56.

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“tyrannical” of all, the state.50 Broadly speaking, this period coincides with the development in England of what some have seen as a state, perhaps a “war state,” which reshaped priorities throughout the Plantagenet lordships and encouraged the development of many of the institutions of government required to launch repeated military operations on an unprecedented level.51 Endemic warfare necessitated the extension of control by central institutions over what their governors considered the periphery. But what the wider community considered the periphery remained a matter of perspective, one that varied considerably depending on whether one was looking out from Bordeaux or Beaumaris, Limerick or Limoges, Rouen or Rochester. If such a state did emerge, then its critical development lay in the wars Edward I and Edward III launched between c. 1280 and c. 1360.52 The military, financial, and political pressures of endemic conflict led to a series of transformations in the machinery of administration, taxation, and bureaucracy. Now, there is a clear danger here of anachronism, certainly of teleology, when discussing the evolution of the state or, indeed, the very existence of a state in the Middle Ages,53 but there seems little doubt that the pressures of war in this period changed (and changed significantly) the nature of government and political society in England and throughout her dominions. As a consequence of these developments the scope of royal policy could and did increase dramatically. There were, however, running concurrently, a number of new and significant limiting factors. Royal policy might now grow in its aspirations, but as it did so it needed to accord with the wishes of the “community of the realm” whose members manned those new institutions and offices, fought in the extended campaigns, and helped to pay for them. Consequently, the Plantagenets could, once more, aspire to “imperial power,” but only in a manner which recognised the ambitions and concerns of a restructured and changing body politic. This was, after all, policy constructed in the aftermath

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Michael Clanchy, “Does Writing Construct the State?,” Journal of Historical Sociology 15 (2002), 68–70; R. R. Davies, “The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept?,” Journal of Historical Sociology 16 (2003), 280–300; Jean-Philippe Genet, La genèse de l’État moderne: Culture et société politique en Angleterre (Paris, 2003), p. 13; Steve Hindle, “When and What was the State? Some Introductory Comments,” Journal of Historical Sociology 15 (2002), 63–65; W. Mark Ormrod, “The English State and the Plantagenet Empire, 1259–1360: A Fiscal Perspective,” in The Medieval State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser (London, 2000), 197–214; Susan Reynolds, “There Were States in Medieval Europe: A Response to Rees Davies,” Journal of Historical Sociology 16 (2003), 550–55; J. R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, 1970), esp. pp. 57–88; John Watts, The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 23–34. G. L. Harriss, “Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England,” Past and Present 138 (1993), 28–57; Richard W. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), pp. 1–5, 384–86. For a wide-ranging discussion of these issues see Crooks, “Before Humpty Dumpty,” esp. pp. 365, 389–91. See for example David Canadine, “British History as a ‘New’ Subject,” in Uniting the Kingdom?, ed. Grant and Stringer, pp. 25–27.

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of Magna Carta (1215), the baronial wars of the 1250s and 1260s, circumscribed by the deposition of Edward II (1327), and, later, limited by the growing power of Parliament. If this was an imperial monarchy, it was also a strangely limited one – forming what John Fortescue (c. 1397–1479) described as dominium politicum et regale.54 It was, however, through grand, imperial aspirations, and specifically through military policy, that Edward III sought to restore the English monarchy to a position of respect after the indignities it had suffered in his father’s reign.55 War with Scotland and France was the means he chose to unite the “community of the realm” in common cause with the monarchy – of firmly reattaching the head of state to the body politic. The English war machine that Edward I crafted in the conquest of Wales had stuttered on occasion in Scotland and suffered a number of chastening defeats, most famously at Bannockburn (1314), but Edward III recognised the opportunities, nonetheless. Bannockburn, of course, taught the English no end of a lesson: it emphasised the enormous potential of disciplined infantry against cavalry (in this case the schiltrom formation), the significance of topography when choosing precisely where to give battle, and offered unimpeachable evidence of the importance of a clear chain of command.56 Such lessons were hardly new, whether or not we wish to see the developments they encouraged as part of a military revolution, but they certainly brought about a further change in English military thinking – one of which Robert Bruce was well aware. Despite his great successes, on his deathbed Robert I (r. 1306–29) is said to have warned his successors of the dangers of facing the English in battle.57 Such advice was not taken to heart and the consequences became brutally clear on the fields of Dupplin Moor (1332) and Halidon Hill (1333). This abrupt reversal in military fortunes is attributable, however, to failures among the Scottish commanders as well as English tactical advances, and to the greater

54

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Sir John Fortescue, De laudibus legum Anglie, ed. and trans. S. B. Chrimes (Cambridge, 1942), pp. xiii, xxxix–xl, 85, 89–91. By the terms of the revised coronation oath of 1308 the king (Edward II) swore to uphold “the rightful laws and customs which the community of the realm shall have chosen.” Thomas Rymer, ed., Foedera, Conventiones, Literae etc., 3 vols. in 6 pts. (London, 1816–30), 2/1:33, 36. Nigel Saul, For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England, 1066–1500 (London, 2011), pp. 93–114; Richard Barber, Edward III and the Triumph of the English: The Battle of Crécy and the Company of the Garter (London, 2013), esp. pp. 97–112. Michael Brown, Bannockburn: The Scottish War and the British Isles, 1307–1323 (Edinburgh, 2008), esp. pp. 5–23. On Scottish military developments in this period see Steve Boardman, “Highland Scots and Anglo-Scottish Warfare, c. 1300–1513,” in England and Scotland at War, ed. King and Simpkin, 231–54; Michael Prestwich, “The Wars of Independence, 1296–1328,” in A Military History of Scotland, ed. Edward M. Spiers, Jeremy A. Crang, and Matthew J. Strickland (Edinburgh, 2012), pp. 133–57, esp. pp. 145–46; Alastair J. Macdonald, “The Kingdom of Scotland at War,” in ibid., 158–81, esp. pp. 158–60. Ranald Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots: The Formative Years of a Military Career, 1327–1335 (Oxford, 1965), p. 111.

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resources which England could direct into her military campaigns.58 Furthermore, despite success in individual engagements, the English, for reasons of geography and topography, as well as financial limitations and political commitments elsewhere, could not wholly impose their lordship in Scotland, nor truly incorporate it into the “Plantagenet Empire.” English interest in Scotland waxed and waned over the course of the Hundred Years War; sometimes in inverse proportion to her commitments in France, sometimes the two theatres were interlinked, as in 1346 when the battle of Neville’s Cross followed hard on the heels of the English victory at Crécy. As already noted, Edward III’s ambitions may have shifted throughout his reign. Perhaps victory at Poitiers (1356) made the claim to the French throne seem an achievable goal – something more than a mere token to be exchanged in a diplomatic game. Whether or not this was the case, a restoration of some or all of the Angevin Empire seems to have remained a consistent ambition, one expressed, for example, in what Le Patourel described as Edward’s “provincial strategy” by which he competed with the Valois kings for authority and the allegiance of regional French powers on a case-by-case basis.59 It can also be seen in the negotiations which preceded and followed the Reims campaign of 1359–60.60 During lulls in the war with France, such as that which followed the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais, his attention and that of his successors could be redirected to other parts of the empire. This was certainly so in Ireland, where English control had begun to lessen by 1337. Serious attempts were made – in the 1350s (under Thomas Rokeby), 1360s (under Lionel of Clarence), and 1390s (under Richard II) – to reinforce royal authority over the diminishing lordship and, indeed, to extend that authority.61 This proved difficult, however, because of political fragmentation among the Irish themselves, and the English inability to sustain

58

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Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 112–28; Alastair J. Macdonald, “Triumph and Disaster: Scottish Military Leadership in the Later Middle Ages,” in A Military History of Scotland, ed. Spiers, et al., 255–82; Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 10–76. For later Anglo-Scottish encounters see David Rollason and Michael Prestwich, eds., The Battle of Neville’s Cross, 1346 (Stamford, 1998); John Sadler, Border Fury: England and Scotland at War, 1296–1568 (Harlow 2006). J. Le Patourel, “Edward III and the Kingdom of France,” History 43 (1958), 172–89. For the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais see Rymer, ed., Foedera, 3/1: 343; Delachenal, Charles V, 2:400–7; Chris Given-Wilson and Françoise Bériac, “Edward III’s Prisoners of War: The Battle of Poitiers and its Context,” English Historical Review 116 (2001), pp. 813–14, 829–30; Clifford J. Rogers, “The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations of 1354–1360 Reconsidered,” in The Age of Edward III, ed. James Bothwell (York, 2001), pp. 193–214; Craig Taylor, “Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne,” in ibid., pp. 155–70. Watt, “The Anglo-Irish Colony under Strain, 1327–99,” pp. 352–96. In the period 1361–76 over £91,000 was spent on wages alone for armies sent to Ireland (£16,000 from Irish sources): P. Connolly, “The Financing of English Expeditions to Ireland, 1361–1376,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, ed. James F. Lydon (Dublin, 1981), p. 117; D. Johnston, “The Interim Years: Richard II and Ireland, 1395–9,” in ibid., 175–95.

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a sufficiently large force in Ireland for sufficient time, given commitments elsewhere. Nonetheless, even when England’s attention turned away from her immediate neighbours in Britain and Ireland after the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, these areas were not ignored. Indeed, the pressures of war increased the need to exploit national and extra-national resources (perhaps this serves as another manifestation of the war state). Consequently, governors of the various lordships were usually charged with improving the profitability of their territories, in the hope that they could operate independently and, in time, return funds to the English treasury.62 In addition, defensive preparations were necessary; improvements to fortifications were made, and measures taken, when the opportunity arose, to assert English dominance.63 The need to pursue such policies was shaped by certain basic political and military priorities – to ensure that taxes were paid, soldiers recruited, and colonial territories did not become safe havens for Valois allies or agents.64 Because of such common concerns, policies within Britain and Ireland were often mirrored, sometimes in a distorted form, in France, where two main phases of military success led to major colonial ventures. The key periods of English territorial expansion in the Hundred Years War came in the early 1360s and in the ten years or so after 1415. Both of these were founded, in part, on battlefield successes – Poitiers and Agincourt – and the treaties that followed them, albeit indirectly (Brétigny-Calais, and Troyes, 1420). However, the English encountered major problems when seeking to exploit these successes for extended periods of time. In general, it proved extremely difficult to convert military gains into long-term political and economic advantages and to establish effective civil administrations in conquered territories. This became of even greater concern in fifteenth-century France when the chevauchée strategy gave way to one of occupation.65

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See, for example, the Black Prince’s appointment as lieutenant of Gascony (10 July 1355): Black Prince’s Register [hereafter BPR], 4:143–45; and prince of Aquitaine (19 July 1362): Rymer, ed., Foedera, 3/2: 667–70. Examples of repairs to fortifications: 1) Gascony – Bayonne (19 July 1380), The National Archives (London) [hereafter TNA]: C 61/94:1; regarding funds for ongoing improvements to the walls of Bourg, Libourne, and Saint-Émilion during the reign of Henry IV see C 61/ 107:145; 111:20; 112:47. The Gascon Rolls Project, which greatly facilitates this kind of study, may be accessed at http://www.gasconrolls.org. 2) Channel Islands: in 1369, fearing an attack, Edward III ordered preparations for the defence of the islands. This came in 1372 when Owain ap Thomas ap Rhodri (Owen of Wales) attacked Guernsey with a force of about 600 men. The campaign proved inconclusive. In 1373, Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France, launched a further assault. In the 1390s the programme of fortification continued at Castle Cornet and Beauregard Tower in Guernsey: Thornton, Channel Islands, pp. 12, 15. Green, “The Hundred Years War, Colonial Policy and the English Lordships,” pp. 238–42. Christine Carpenter, “War, Government and Governance in England in the Later Middle Ages,” in The Fifteenth Century VII: Conflicts, Consequences and the Crown in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Linda Clark (Woodbridge, 2007), p. 22; Green, Hundred Years War, pp. 155–76.

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The situation in Ireland was similar. The colony suffered regularly from Gaelic Irish raids such as those which the Mac Murchadhas orchestrated in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. These hostilities alternated with periods of truce with the Dublin administration. In practice, when the colony had sufficient resources it could enforce the submission of Gaelic chiefs. If sizable forces were available to competent commanders such as Thomas, duke of Clarence (lieutenant of Ireland, 1401–3, 1408–9) and John Talbot (lieutenant of Ireland, 1414–19, 1446–47) they could achieve considerable successes, but these were never consolidated fully and before long the colony was thrown back on the defensive. A letter to Henry V in 1418 urged him to maintain a strong army in Ireland because “Irish enemies and English rebells yf they may espie the contrary : : : will rise agayne unto wars.”66 Clearly, such a situation did not lead to stability, but even if it had, what sort of society did the English Crown seek to create in these areas? Here, an awareness of both historiographical spheres can be especially instructive because it seems highly likely that what might be called the English “colonial tone” in France was set in Wales and Ireland. One scholar who noted this is Christopher Allmand, who raised the intriguing notion that the English feared that Normandy in the 1420s might become home to a “middle nation” like that identified in Ireland – one distanced politically and culturally from the “mother country,” but also distinct from and disliked by the indigenous population.67 In Ireland those of the “middle nation” are usually equated with people labelled “degenerate” in legislation that the Dublin Parliament enacted in 1297, and described in similar terms in the Statute of Kilkenny (1366). While most Anglo-Irish noblemen, born and raised in Ireland, identified with English culture and did not seek to intermarry with their Irish neighbours, learn the Irish language, or adapt to Gaelic customs, their customs and language inevitably underwent a process of acculturation.68 This became a cause for considerable unease in London and Dublin. 66

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Cited by Art Cosgrove, “The Emergence of the Pale,” in New History of Ireland, ed. Cosgrove, p. 545. On warfare in Ireland see Robin Frame, “The Defence of the Irish Lordship, 1250–1450,” and Katharine Simms, “Gaelic Warfare in the Middle Ages,” both in A Military History of Ireland, ed. Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffrey (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 76–98, 99–115. C. T. Allmand, “La Normandie devant l’opinion anglaise à la fin de la guerre de Cent Ans,” Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartes 128 (1970), p. 355; James F. Lydon, “The Middle Nation,” in The English in Medieval Ireland, ed. Lydon, pp. 1–26. See further Maurice Keen, “The End of the Hundred Years War: Lancastrian France and Lancastrian England,” in England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essay in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), pp. 297–311. Statutes and Ordinances, ed. Berry, pp. 430–69; Sparky Booker, “An English City: Gaelicization and Cultural Exchange in Late Medieval Dublin,” in Medieval Dublin X, ed. Seán Duffy (Dublin, 2010), pp. 287–98; Seán Duffy, “The Problem of Degeneracy,” in Law and Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Ireland: The Dublin Parliament of 1297, ed. James F. Lydon (Dublin, 1997), pp. 87–106; David Green, “The Statute of Kilkenny (1366): Legislation and the State,” Journal of Historical Sociology 27 (2014), 236–62; James F. Lydon, “Nation and

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The differences between English attitudes to French and Celtic societies meant that this was, in reality, not such a deep concern in Normandy, but it was problematic all the same, as the process ran counter to bureaucratic, political, and cultural trends in England.69 Administrations throughout Plantagenet territories became subject to what Rees Davies described as a “mentality of uniformity,” and this was the case whether they were in France, Britain, or Ireland. As Davies said, this insistence on uniformity prevented England “from reaching out effectively and constructively to the other peoples and power centres of the British Isles, except possibly on its own terms.”70 In a similar fashion Le Patourel argued that governmental procedures in all these disparate territories were brought increasingly under English control and followed increasingly regularised patterns. He, however, attributed the remaining differences evident between English administrations in Celtic countries and those in France to the fact that rule in the latter was based on inheritance rather than conquest.71 Whether this argument holds true for the English acquisitions in France during the Hundred Years War is questionable. Calais, much of the principality of Aquitaine, and those lands in Normandy and northern France acquired by Henry V were the product of conquest or, at the least, a diplomatic settlement secured through military force. Indeed, those territories which Henry V captured before sealing the Treaty of Troyes were referred to explicitly as the pays de conquête. Furthermore, the prosecution of the war and the transference of staff and officers throughout the king’s lordships ensured considerable similarities of policy and practice between England, the English colonies in the British Isles, and those in France. In this period the Crown (or perhaps the state) began to intrude into new areas as it sought to standardise a range of social and commercial activities. Attempts to regulate and restrict social and economic mobility in England, such as the labour legislation, sumptuary and game laws, have much in common

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Race in Medieval Ireland,” in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan V. Murray (Leeds, 1995), p. 105. Such attitudes have been explored in great detail in various works by R. R. Davies, R. Bartlett, John Gillingham, Matthew Strickland, and others. See, for example R. R. Davies, “The Peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1100–1400. Pt. 1: Identities,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 4 (1994), 1–20; Robert Bartlett, “Colonial Aristocracies of the High Middle Ages,” in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. Robert Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989), pp. 23–47; Matthew Strickland, “Killing or Clemency? Changing Attitudes to Conduct in War in Eleventh and Twelfth-Century Britain and France,” in Krieg im Mittelalter, ed. Hans-Henning Kortüm (Berlin, 2001), pp. 93–122; and John Gillingham’s collected essays published as The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National identity, and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000). Davies, First English Empire, p. 201. See also R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 120. With regard to both Cheshire and the Channel Islands, Tim Thornton has noted increasing English concern over central control and the imposition of uniformity. “Centralisation and uniformity are axiomatic, precociously distinctive of the British Isles”: The Channel Islands, p. 6. Le Patourel, “Plantagenet Dominions,” pp. 289, 303–6.

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with methods enacted throughout the dominions of the Plantagenet Empire to prevent degeneracy or acculturation.72 There remained, however, substantial differences between the various lordships, which meant that uniformity proved more difficult to impose in some areas than others. The numbers of English settlers, the relationship between the settler communities and England, and the resources – military and financial – available to governors and lieutenants to impose “colonial” authority all varied. As a consequence, English administrations were usually compelled to work with existing power structures and employed local men in official positions. In Gascony and Aquitaine the good will of the aristocracy had to be maintained because its members played a vital role in the defence of the duchy/principality.73 The duchy also provided considerable numbers of crossbowmen throughout the war, although it was rare for other troops to serve far from the region, except in those campaigns which the Black Prince led in the 1350s and 1360s.74 After the Treaty of Troyes recruitment patterns changed because Frenchmen could serve Henry V as regent of France. It was not long, however, before anxieties about non-“English” troops arose once more as military and political conditions deteriorated. Consequently, at a muster in 1430 in Normandy officials were to reject for service anyone who was not English, Irish, Welsh or Gascon.75 Irish troops were also recruited to serve within Ireland itself and overseas, although this, too, might be restricted on occasion, and stipulations were sometimes made that archers serving in Ireland had to be born in England. Hence, in an aborted campaign of 1392 not only were the Gaelic-Irish excluded from

72

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After the Ordinance of 1349 and Statute of 1351, labour legislation became a major feature of parliamentary business. This included the 1388 Statute of Cambridge. Sumptuary legislation was adopted, annulled, and readopted after October 1363 (see also the parliaments of April 1379 and September 1402). Richard II passed the game laws in January 1390. For details of these see the relevant entries in the Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Given-Wilson; and for further discussion Chris Given-Wilson, “Service, Serfdom and English Labour Legislation, 1350–1500,” in Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Anne Curry and Elizabeth Matthew (Woodbridge, 2000), 21–37; Green, “Statute of Kilkenny,” pp. 244–50; N. B. Harte, “State Control of Dress and Social Change in PreIndustrial England,” in Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England: Essays Presented to F. J. Fisher, ed. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (London, 1976), pp. 139–40. “La défense du duché est abandonée au principal des nobles du pays”: Pierre Capra, “Les bases sociales du pouvoir anglo-gascon au milieu du xive siècle,” Le Moyen Age, 4th ser., 30 (1975), p. 276. See also Pierre Capra, “L’évolution de l’administration anglo-gasconne au milieu du xive siècle,” Bordeaux et les îles britanniques du xiiie au xxe siècle (Bordeaux, 1975), p. 23. For the 1355–56 campaigns see Richard Barber, Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, 1978), pp. 113–47; H. J. Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–57 (repr. Barnsley, 2004); Peter Hoskins, In the Steps of the Black Prince: The Road to Poitiers, 1355–1356 (Woodbridge, 2011); Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, pp. 348–84; idem, “The Black Prince in Gascony and France (1355–56) According to MS78 of Corpus Christi College, Oxford,” Journal of Medieval Military History 7 (2009), 168–75; Sumption, Trial by Fire, pp. 174–87, 190–249. Bell, Curry, et al., Soldier in Late Medieval England, pp. 242, 245, 249–50.

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service but also the Anglo-Irish (that is, the English born in Ireland). This concern with the national identity of soldiers continued during the lieutenancy of Thomas, duke of Clarence, although it may be that, as on the Scottish Marches, the Crown wished to ensure that its money was spent on reinforcements from outside Ireland rather than on paying wages to men who were obliged to serve anyway.76 Whatever the motivation, in Ireland there was, by contrast, a need to entrust administrative and military responsibilities to the local nobility. One of the chief problems with implementing this process of delegation lay in the vendettas which divided the aristocracy. Indeed, this was a concern throughout the Plantagenet dominions and a growing problem within England itself as tension developed around the Lancastrian usurpation, and in the political friction which led to the Wars of the Roses. In Wales private war (reminiscent of the native bloodfeud or galanas) was virtually institutionalised; Aquitaine was riven by prolonged feuds such as that between the houses of Foix and Armagnac, just as Ireland was torn between the Butlers and Geraldines.77 The Talbot–Ormond feud, which developed after John Talbot’s appointment in Ireland in 1414, was so divisive that it caused John Swayne, archbishop of Armagh (d. 1439x42) to remark, “all this lond is severed.”78 In Wales, high office was usually restricted to those of English descent, but local government remained largely in Welsh hands. By the middle years of the fourteenth century around 80% of offices below the rank of sheriff were held by Welshmen.79 Welsh soldiers were also very prominent in a number of military expeditions in the early exchanges of the Hundred Years War. Perhaps as many as 7,000 Welshmen fought for England in the course of the Crécy–Calais campaign (1346–47).80 Ten years later, Avesbury referred to “a great number of Welshmen” (magnaque numero Wallensium), although there actually seems to have been a relatively small Welsh contingent both in the grande chevauchée

76 77

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Bell, Curry, et al., Soldier in Late Medieval England, p. 244. Peter Crooks, “Factions, Feuds and Noble Power in the Lordship of Ireland, c. 1356–1496,” Irish Historical Studies 35 (2007), pp. 434–36. See further Justine Firnhaber-Baker, Violence and the State in Languedoc, 1250–1400 (Cambridge, 2014), esp. pp. 125–32, 159–68. The Register of John Swayne, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, 1418–1439, ed. D. A. Chart (Belfast, 1935), p. 111. James Given, State and Society: Gwynedd and Languedoc under Outside Rule (Ithaca, 1990), 158–59; R. A. Griffiths, The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: The Structure and Personnel of Government, I: South Wales, 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 1972), pp. xviii–xix. TNA E 403/336/44; BPR, 1:7, 13, 68–69, 80; George Wrottesley, ed., Crécy and Calais from the Public Records (Collections for a History of Staffordshire edited by the William Salt Archaeological Society, xviii), p. 58; Andrew Ayton, “The English Army and the Normandy Campaign of 1346,” in England and Normandy, ed. Bates and Curry, pp. 261–62 n. 55; Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, ed. J. Goronwy Edwards (Cardiff, 1935), pp. 193, 236–37.

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led by the Black Prince in 1355 and at the battle of Poitiers.81 Welsh troops – around 1,000 – also participated in the Reims campaign of 1359–60.82 Welsh military service declined after 1360, in part because recruitment by indenture became problematic for local lords who could not bear the associated costs. In consequence, with the exception of Gregory Sais (d. 1390), no Welsh captain achieved particular prominence in English service in the middle period of the war.83 Welsh soldiers were, however, raised on occasion to defend the principality against French invasion, and some Welshmen were recruited for Richard II’s first campaign to Ireland (1394–95).84 The Glyn Dŵr revolt had a further impact on recruitment: because of the rising only five hundred soldiers from south Wales were recruited for the Agincourt campaign; Welshmen from the north became especially distrusted, although some may have served with troops from Cheshire and Lancashire.85 With regard to military recruitment within England, the Hundred Years War brought men together from throughout the country, and many fought in a number of different operational theatres. As Anne Curry’s project has shown, in the period from 1369 until the end of the war, of those soldiers who fought in more than one campaign, more than a third of them saw action in at least three different regions. This was in spite of the fact that some regional specialisation proved inevitable: men from the eastern and southern coasts, from Kent, Devon, and towns such as Bristol, tended to serve at sea, while the Scottish Marches were usually patrolled by men from north of the River Trent.86 Matters of lordship

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83 84 85

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Robert of Avesbury, De gestis mirabilibus regis Edwardi Tertii, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson (London, 1889), p. 425; Delachenal, Charles V, 1:124 n. 4; D. L. Evans, “Some Notes on the History of the Principality of Wales in the Time of the Black Prince, 1343–1376,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymrodorion (1925–26), pp. 62–63, 80. TNA E 101/393/11 f. 115–115v.; BPR, 3:331, 349–50, 367–68; Rymer, Foedera, 3/1:415; The Wardrobe Book of William de Norwell, 12 July 1338 to 27 May 1340, ed. Mary Lyon, Bryce Lyon, and Henry S. Lucas (Brussels, 1983), pp. 356–62; Barber, Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine, p. 158. A. D. Carr, “A Welsh Knight in the Hundred Years War: Sir Gregory Sais,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1977), 40–53. Bell, Curry, et al., Soldier in Later Medieval England, pp. 238–39. Anne Curry, “Sir Thomas Erpingham: A Career in Arms,” in Agincourt, 1415, ed. Anne Curry (Stroud, 2000), p. 66; C. T. Allmand, Henry V (New Haven, 1997), p. 209. Welsh troops, however, were recruited in Henry’s later campaigns, for example in 1420: TNA E 403/645/6. The following are chosen from among many examples: Sir John Braham saw service in seven different theatres of war including the south coast of England (in 1369, to defend against invasion), with Robert Knolles in France (1370), in Brittany (1379–80), Portugal (1381, 1385), Spain (1386), and Ireland (c. 1395). John Crophull served in Flanders (1383) and Berwick (1386) and Ireland (1389–92). John Lynford took out protections for virtually every front of England’s wars in the late 14th century – in Brittany, Flanders, Portugal, Spain, and the Scottish borders. Owain Glyn Dŵr served Richard II in the years before his revolt, in the garrison at Berwick under Gregory Sais in 1384, and possibly with the same commander in the Scottish expedition of the following year, before twice serving at sea with the earl of Arundel in 1387 and 1388. Janico Dartasso served in Calais, on the Scottish border, at Calais, in

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might also be important: the survey highlights the role of the Black Prince in drawing soldiers from Cheshire to serve in Aquitaine, and on the development of traditions of regional military service in less likely areas such as Norfolk.87 In the fifteenth century patterns of recruitment did change when military service tended to be more geographically confined because the war effort focused so heavily on northern France. In this context, garrison duty became particularly important. The command of castles in occupied France, as on the Scottish Border, was usually entrusted to men of proven military ability, including members of the royal circle such as the king’s chamber knights, and officers might be transferred from one location to another.88 Major castles and towns also played important symbolic roles. Calais, for example, served, in the words of David Grummitt, as “a showcase of English royal power to foreign visitors and the splendour of its buildings, the garrison and its captains needed to reflect this.” However, as well as being able to cover costs and undertake significant political and diplomatic functions the captains’ most important role was military.89 During the periods of major colonial expansion English control over large towns might be achieved through force, (re)settlement, or other means. In the principality of Aquitaine the Black Prince sought to establish good relations with urban communities by confirming the privileges of many towns and gaining support among politically important families and individuals. In Poitou, Saintonge, La Rochelle, and elsewhere, various liberties were confirmed or increased, and even though administrative offices usually went to Englishmen, roles in justice

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Ireland, and France. Bell, Curry, et al., Soldier in Later Medieval England, pp. 114–15, 123–24, 231, 246. See further R. R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr (Oxford, 1995), pp. 129–52; Simon Walker, “Janico Dartasso: Chivalry, Nationality and the Man-at-Arms,” History 85 (1999), 31–51. Bell, Curry, et al., Soldier in Later Medieval England, pp. 227–29, 233–35. See also P. J. Caudrey, “The Erpingham Window and the Norfolk and Suffolk Roll of Arms: War, Memory and Society in Fifteenth-Century East Anglia,” Norfolk Archaeology 46 (2013), 467–80; Daniel P. Franke, “War, Crisis, and East Anglia, 1334–1340: Towards a Reassessment,” in Hundred Years War (Part III), ed. Villalon and Kagay, pp. 187–216; David Green, “Edward the Black Prince and East Anglia: An Unlikely Association,” in Fourteenth Century England 3, ed. W. Mark Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2004), 83–98. Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1413 (New Haven, 1986), p. 171. For example, Sir John Radcliffe, Gloucester’s lieutenant in Calais during the 1436 Burgundian siege had served in France since 1413 and perhaps at Agincourt. He was successively bailli of Evreux (Normandy), constable of Bordeaux, captain of Fronsac castle, seneschal of Aquitaine, and lieutenant of Calais. In 1429 he was nominated to the Order of the Garter. Similarly, once Gloucester resigned his post his successors were tested military men. Sir Thomas Rempston, lieutenant of Calais, November 1437–February 1439, had first served in Henry V’s 1415 campaign and had held captaincies of several castles in Normandy in the 1420s and 1430s, and he was seneschal of Aquitaine, April 1440–July 1442. See David Grummitt, The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 65–67.

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and finance were offered to locals.90 Lionel of Clarence employed a similar policy in Ireland: he gave charters, grants, or privileges to nineteen towns and tried to secure the support of significant individuals and families.91 In both cases this approach did not prove particularly successful. An alternative was to expel the inhabitants and completely repopulate the town with English settlers as Edward III did at Calais in 1347.92 In establishing the Norman colony Henry V adopted elements from both approaches – his policy shifted between brutality and leniency. At Harfleur, Cherbourg, and Caen hostages were taken and there were mass expulsions. The king then sought to populate the towns, which were his “par droite de conquête,” with a substantial English presence – men who would defend, maintain, or augment his conquests: “une sorte de colonisation militaire.”93 Henry, John, duke of Bedford (1389–1435), and their lieutenants and successors, saw the conquest of Normandy as the first stage in a wider programme of expansion, one that would require something more than passive support for the English regime. They gave the colonists a personal stake in maintaining La France Anglaise while also ensuring that they had specific responsibilities to do so. Henry’s ruthlessness ensured that he faced little resistance elsewhere. Later, he and his successors sought to create a spirit of conciliation while maintaining an intimidating military presence. Towns such as Bayeux and Rouen had their privileges confirmed and townsmen were encouraged to petition the king in the hope that they would see him as a just and legitimate ruler. Achieving a balanced relationship between ruler and ruled was vital for the political, social, and military health of the Plantagenet Empire – it was, though, a balance rarely achieved.94 ***

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Rymer, ed., Foedera, 3/1:548; Pierre Chaplais, “Some Documents Regarding the Fulfilment and Interpretation of the Treaty of Brétigny,” Camden Society 3RD ser., 19 (1952), pp. 52–53 and nn. 1–2; Robert Favreau, “Comptes de la sénéchaussée de Saintonge, 1360–2,” Bibliothèque de l’école des Chartes 117 (1959), pp. 76–78; Robert Favreau, “La cession de La Rochelle à l’Angleterre en 1360,” in La “France anglaise” au moyen âge, ed. RobertHenri Bautier (Paris, 1988), pp. 222–27. P. Boissonnade, Histoire de Poitou (Paris, 1941), pp. 136–37; Delachenal, Charles V, 4:18–20, 67; Émile Labroue, Bergerac sous les Anglais (Bordeaux, 1893), p. 66; Green, “Lordship and Principality,” pp. 20–27; Arlette Higounet-Nadal, Périgueux au XIVe et XVe siècles (Bordeaux, 1978), p. 148. Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, I: Trial by Battle (London, 1990), pp. 576–83. Expulsion, of course, was not a realistic option in the Anglo-Irish lordship since the “English” urban elite in this period formed the bedrock of colonial society. Léon Puisseux, L’émigration normande et colonisation anglaise en Normandie au XVe siècle (Paris, 1866), p. 66. C. T. Allmand, “The Lancastrian Land Settlement in Normandy, 1417–50,” Economic History Review, 2ND ser., 21 (1968), 461–79, esp. pp. 463–66; Anne Curry, “Towns at War: Relations between the Towns of Normandy and their English Rulers, 1417–1450,” in Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century, ed. John A. F. Thompson (Gloucester, 1988), pp. 149, 157–61; Green, “The Hundred Years War, Colonial Policy and the English Lordships,” pp. 247–50.

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There are many advantages in thinking broadly about the Plantagenet dominions, and military historians have helped to show the way to the wider academic community, and have suggested new avenues for study. To some degree, these advantages and avenues are self-evident. When considering the later medieval period it has become a truism to state that the sea served as means of transportation as much as it did as a barrier, and if this was so it must have provided a means of transportation to Ireland, just as it did to France. Similarly, there is no question that matters of national and regional policy were interrelated and the exigencies of war waged on a scale hitherto unknown required the Plantagenets to exploit resources from throughout their estates – men and money, foodstuffs and fodder, armour and arrowheads. Attempts were also made to transfer military strategies throughout Britain, Ireland, and France. Defensive concepts, especially the use of castles and fortified towns, could be exported easily. Offensive tactics, however, proved more problematic. If English raiding tactics in France were, as Clifford Rogers and others have argued,95 intended to bring the enemy to battle, then how might such an approach have been employed in those areas, such as Wales and Ireland, where a cohesive military force rarely existed that would consider engaging in such a battle? Warfare in Ireland, for example, focused chiefly on cattle-raiding and hostage-taking. Richard II found no need to fight a battle during his two campaigns across the Irish Sea. Sustained sieges were also virtually non-existent, since the walled towns and other major fortifications east of the River Shannon were in “loyal” English/Anglo-Irish hands. In Wales we can find some exceptions to this pattern, such as the battle of Shrewsbury (1403), during the Glyn Dŵr revolt. There, however, the Lancastrian army faced not only Welsh troops but also those recruited by Archibald Douglas (1372–1424) as well as the Percys’ archers who wreaked such damage that Thomas Walsingham tells us, “the men on the king’s side fell like the leaves that fall in the cold weather after frost.”96 In general, therefore, military conditions in Wales, Ireland, and, to a lesser extent, Scotland, differed from those the English encountered in France. There the countryside was ripe for raiding and exploitation through chevauchées and demands for appatis, respectively, and the enemy might be lured into a set-piece battle. Does this indicate a failure of Plantagenet thinking? The restoration of the “empire” depended on a successful military policy. And success would be achieved through a single or a short series of major military victories that utterly destroyed the enemy hierarchy. Without this, despite the new resources

95

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See Clifford J. Rogers, “The Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’ in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval Military History, 1 (2002), 1–19; Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, esp. pp. 8–9, 296–308, 357–58, 421–22. For further discussion of battle-seeking and battle-avoidance strategies see Stephen Morillo, “Battle Seeking: The Contexts of Vegetian Strategy,” Journal of Medieval Military History, 1 (2002), 21–41; and John Gillingham, “‘Up with Orthodoxy!’ In Defense of Vegetian Warfare,” Journal of Medieval Military History, 2 (2004), 149–58. The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376–1422), trans. David Preest, ed. James G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 328.

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available, a piecemeal extension of power was never going to be sufficient to gain control in France, and in the meantime the deployment of resources over the Channel meant a slackening of English authority elsewhere. Edward I’s experiences in Scotland should have pointed the way. Victory in battle was one thing, but if that victory was not absolute Plantagenet power could not be established over the country as a whole. The later Plantagenets’ dream of empire was a real aspiration, and one which seemed attainable at certain points in the Hundred Years War because of the success of English military strategies. It proved, however, to be something of a chimera. It was one thing to conceive an imperial policy, quite another to implement it.

3 The Parliament of the Crown of Aragon as Military Financier in the War of the Two Pedros1 Donald J. Kagay

One of the most memorable speeches in American presidential history was that delivered on December 8, 1941, when Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded a declaration of war against Japan before a joint session of Congress. What the president demanded from the legislature was not only a formal recognition of the war’s existence, but an open-ended though unstated pledge of assistance – especially of the financial sort – until the conflict came to a military or diplomatic conclusion.2 Though remarkable in the governmental history of the United States, such calls for money to fight wars were quite normal in the British “mother of parliaments” and in other medieval assemblies. To review how one set of later medieval parliamentary institutions came to the aid of its embattled king, this paper will explore the repeated efforts of the estate assemblies of Aragon and Valencia (Cortes) and Catalonia (Corts) in support of the crafty statesman, Pere III [Pedro IV] (r. 1336–87), during the largest conflict between the polities of Christian Spain, the later-named War of the Two Pedros (1356–66). Like all parliamentary assemblies of the medieval world, those of the Crown of Aragon sprang from the royal court, that ill-defined collection of noble and ecclesiastical advisers along with the king’s relatives and body servants.3 When the count of Barcelona or the king of Aragon or Valencia needed either “advice” (consilium) or “aid” (auxilium) – this usually meant soldiers or the money to pay for them4 – he 1 2 3

4

I extend my hearty thanks for the suggestions and information provided by the anonymous readers for this article, which have assuredly improved it. “‘A Date Which Will Live in Infamy,’ FDR Asks for Declaration of War,” historymatters. gmu.edu/d/5166 [accessed January 18, 2014]. Luis Felipe Arregui Lucea, “La curia y las Cortes en Aragón,” Argensola 4 (1953), 1–36, esp. pp. 4–7; Thomas N. Bisson, “The Problem of Feudal Monarchy, Catalonia, and France,” in Medieval France and her Pyrenean Neighbours: Studies in Early Institutional History (London, 1989), study 12, pp. 237–55, esp. pp. 240–41, 245–46; J. C. Holt, “The Prehistory of Parliament,” in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. R. G. Davies and J. H. Denton (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 1–28, esp. pp. 4–6. For the average size of military forces of the Crown of Aragon and Castile-León in the mid fourteenth century, see Nicolás Agrait, “Monarchy and Military Practice During the Reign of Alfonso XI of Castile (1312–50),” (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 2003), 62–71; María Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, “La organización militar en Cataluña en la Edad Media,” Revista de Historia Militar 45 (2001), 119–222, esp. 175–76; Jorge Saiz Serrano, “Guerra y nobleza en

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summoned his churchmen, nobles, and townsmen to meet in an expanded session of his court. This “full,” “distinguished,” “praiseworthy,” “solemn,” or “general court” was called into existence by the king and after it had acceded to the king’s wishes, it was adjourned and ceased to be, having existed only as an “occasion, an occurrence, and not yet a separate court.”5 Despite this shadow life, the national assemblies of eastern Spain became important adjuncts to the long periods of war against Islam practiced by the great reconquest warrior, Jaume I (Jaime I) (r. 1214–76).6 By the end of his life, such meetings functioned in all of his peninsular territories of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, and by 1287 they had all gained legal recognition of their existence.7 Besides their legislative and judicial functions, the fiscal role of the Crown of Aragon’s assemblies was surely the most significant to a king immersed in the complexities of war. After he had run through funds provided by military taxes such as the redemptio exercitus and defectus servitii, which allowed payment in lieu of military service, “arbitrary exactions” (questiae), “tithes” (decimae) granted from local ecclesiastical revenues, and loans from local and foreign moneylenders, he had no option but to turn to his national assemblies.8 The first fonts of money

5

6

7 8

la Corona de Aragón. La caballería en los ejércitos del rey (siglos XIV–XV),” (Ph.D. diss., Universidad de Valencia, 2003), pp. 114–24. Donald J. Kagay, “The Emergence of ‘Parliament’ in the Thirteenth-Century Crown of Aragon: A View from the Gallery,” in On the Social Origins of Medieval Institutions: Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan, ed. Donald J. Kagay and Theresa M. Vann (Leiden, 1998), pp. 222–41, esp. pp. 223–24; Antonio Marongiu, Medieval Parliaments: A Comparative Study, trans. S. J. Woolf (London, 1968), p. 51; A. R. Myers, Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789 (New York, 1975), pp. 64–65; Evelyn S. Procter “The Development of the Catalan Corts in the Thirteenth Century,” Estudis Universitaris Catalans 22 (1936), 581–607; H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Parliaments and Great Councils in Medieval England (London, 1961), p. 9. Donald J. Kagay, “The Development of the Cortes in the Crown of Aragon, 1064–1327,” (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1981), pp. 93–114; María Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, “Les Corts de Catalunya i la creació de la Diputació del General o Generalitat en el marc de la guerra amb Castella (1359–1369),” Anuario de Estudios Medievales [hereafter AEM] 34/2 (2004), pp. 875–938. The rulers of the Crown of Aragon bear both Catalan and Aragonese names and their regnal numbers may also be different. To be consistent, I will list both Catalan and Aragonese names and numbers in the first instance and utilize the Catalan version thereafter. Ibid., pp. 97–99, 111–12, 128–29, 132–35, 139–41, 169, 189, 201–6; Procter, “Development,” pp. 20–21. Robert I. Burns, S.J., “The Crusade against Murcia: Provisioning the Armies of James the Conqueror, 1264–1267,” in Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and Around the Crown of Aragon: Essays in Honour of Professor Elena Lourie, ed. Harvey J. Hames (Leiden, 2004), pp. 35–63, esp. p. 62; Luis J. Fortún Perez de Ciriza, “Relaciones financieras entre Sancho el Fuerte de Navarra y los monarcas de la Corona de Aragón,” in Jaime I y su época [X Congreso de la Historia de la Corona de Aragón] (Zaragoza, 1976), Comunicaciones 3, 4 and 5, pp. 171–82; Donald J. Kagay, “Army Mobilization, Royal Administration, and the Realm in the Thirteenth-Century Crown of Aragon,” in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Robert I. Burns, ed. P. E. Chevedden, D. J. Kagay, P. G. Padilla, and L. Simon, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1995–96), pp. 2:95–115, esp. pp. 102–4; Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, 2003), p. 154.

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that the royal warrior could tap in a parliamentary setting were traditional imposts (the bovatge in Catalonia and the monedatge in Aragon and Valencia) which the members of the national assembly granted in exchange for the king’s promise to avoid devaluation of the coinage for a specific time limit.9 When these funds were not available or had run out, the king was faced with the grueling prospect of requesting a subsidy from the members of his assemblies. If the conflict endured for year after year, the sovereign had no choice but to make concessions that would alter his relationship to these bodies. With the decade-long border conflict Pere fought with Pedro I of Castile (r. 1350–66/69) (thus “the Two Pedros”), the royal dependence on the parliament in order to keep troops in the field caused just such primal changes to the Crown of Aragon’s constitution. While the conflict between Aragon and Castile lasted a full ten years, its origins stretched back for over a century to a simmering rivalry between Jaume I and his son-in-law, Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252–84) that erupted into full-scale war when Jaume II (Jaime II) of Aragon (r. 1292–1327) overran Castile’s southern region, Murcia.10 When these barely suppressed bad feelings erupted in the late summer of 1356 as the result of a Catalan privateer’s attacking two merchantmen allied to Castile in sight of Pedro I himself,11 Pere found himself in charge of long lines of lightly defended frontier.12 After a fall replete with raid and counter-raid, the Aragonese king faced the new year with the same problems and little money to deal with them. He thus entered into a period of five years during which he attempted to survive from one military grant to another, despite the frustration and political loss of face this might cause him.13

9

10

11

12

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Thomas N. Bisson, Conservation of Coinage: Monetary Exploitation and its Restraint in France, Catalonia, and Aragon, c. 1000–1225 AD (Oxford, 1979), pp. 90–95; Josiah Cox Russell, “The Medieval Monedatge of Aragon and Valencia,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106, no. 6 (1962), 483–504, esp. p. 484; Ferran Soldevila, “A prepòsit del servei del bovatge,” AEM 1 (1954), 753–87. Robert I. Burns, S. J., “Warrior Neighbors: Alfonso el Sabio and Crusader Valencia: An Archival Case Study in his International Relations,” Viator 21 (1990), 146–202; Josep-David Garrido i Valls, La conquesta del su Valencià i Múrcia per Jaume II (Barcelona, 20002); Josep-David Garrido i Valls, Jaume I i el regne de Múrcia (Barcelona, 1997). Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, “Causes i antecedents de la guerra dels dos Peres,” Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 63 (1987), 445–508; Maria Rosa Muñoz Pomer, “Preliminares de la Guerra de los Dos Pedros en el Reino de Valencia (1356),” Anales de la Universidad de Alicante [hereafter AUA] 1 (1982), 117–34, esp. p. 121. For Pere’s developing defensive policy against Castile, see Donald J. Kagay, “Defending the Western and Southern Frontiers in the War of the Two Pedros: An Experiment in NationBuilding,” Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians 23 (2002), 77–107, esp. pp. 81–82; Donald J. Kagay, “The War of the Two Pedros (1356–1366): Aragon’s Successful Administrative Strategy of Asymmetrical Defense,” Imago Temporis. Medium Aevum 6 (2012), 191–222. For works on various phases of the War of the Two Pedros, see Alfonso Antoli Fernández, “La conquista de Jumilla por el Infante Don Fernando,” Murgetana 23 (1993), 55–73; Manuel Becerra Hormiga, “La Corona de Aragón de los Dos Pedros. El Corso,” in Relaciones exteriores del Reino de Granada “IV Coloquio de Historia Medieval Andaluza,” ed. Cristina Segura Graiño (Almeria, 1988), pp. 307–21; José Vicente Cabezuelo Pliego, La Guerra de los Dos Pedros en las tierras Alicantinas (Alicante, 1991); Julia Campón Gonzalvo, “Consecuencias de

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Since Aragon and Valencia contained all the borderlands threatened by Castile, the majority of Pere’s assemblies until 1362 took place in those realms.14 In the late spring of 1357, when Pedro I was launching a number of offenses across the Aragonese border, Pere summoned a national assembly of Aragon’s four estates – the clergy, nobles, knights, and townsmen – to Cariñena to the southwest of Zaragoza for July 30, 1357. Describing in his opening speech the dire conditions on the war front, the king was assured by his people that they would help him as “true and faithful vassals are bound to for their natural lord.”15 After a week of consultation, they made good on their declaration of allegiance by pledging they would approve a general subsidy that would pay for 700 frontier knights for the next two years. This promise was clearly not free, however, but was larded with conditions. The parliamentarians and not the king would collect the grant, set the daily salary level for heavily armored and lightly armored horsemen, and immediately stop this flow of funds if peace was declared with Castile. They would also choose the captains for service on the Aragonese frontier and warned them to maintain control over their troops or suffer the same legal fate that “robbers” would.16 Temporarily stopping the bleeding on the western frontier, Pere turned to another exposed borderland, that of Valencia. Coming before the principal churchmen, aristocrats, and townsmen at the principal cathedral (Seu) of the southern capital on December 30, 1357, he begged them for money because of the “war unjustly waged by the Castilian king.” Though “listening solemnly” to his request, the members of the assembly would not be able to turn to the pressing matter of a war subsidy for over a week because of the procedural minutiae that had to be attended to.17 The appeal to the southern kingdom that Pere would

14

15

16

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la Guerra de los Dos Pedros en el Condado de Denia,” AUA, 8 (1990–91), 57–68; Mario Lafuente Gómez, Approximació a las condiciones de vida en Aroca y su entorno durante la Guerra de los Dos Pedros (1356–1366),” Studium. Revista de humanidades, 15 (2005), 53–87; Mario Lafuente Gómez, Un reino en armas: La guerra de los Dos Pedros en Aragón (1356–1366) (Zaragoza, 2014); Antonio Ramón Pont, “El Infante Don Fernandom Señor de Orihuela en la Guerra de los Dos Pedros (1356–1366),” AUA, 2 (1983), 63–92. For the general history of the Aragonese Cortes and the Valencian Corts, see Esteban Sarasa Sánchez, “Los Cortes de Aragón en la Edad Media,” in Los Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1987), 2:492–539; and Sylvia Romeu Alfaro, “Los Cortes de Valencia de la Edad Media,” in Cortes de Castilla, 2:540–74. Cartas de reino de Aragón 1357–1451. Extractos y fragmentos de procesos desaperecidos [hereafter CRA], ed. Angel Sesma Muñoz and Esteban Sarasa Sánchez (Valencia, 1976), 20. For parliamentary proceedings of Pere III in Aragon, see Acta Curiarum regni Aragonum, vol. 2, Cortes de Pedro IV/1, eds. José Ángel Sesma Muñoz y Mario Lafuente Gómez and vol. 3, Cortes de Pedro IV/2, ed. Carlos Laliena Corbera, 4 vols. to date (Zaragoza, 2008–13). Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón [hereafter ACA], Cancillería real, Registro [hereafter R.] 557, ff. 8–10v; CRA, 24–33; Sylvia Romeu Alfaro, “Aportación documental a las Cortes de Valencia,” Anuario del historia de derecho epsilon [hereafter AHDE] 43 (1973), 385–428, esp. pp. 398–404. Archivo de la Corona de Aragón [hereafter ACA], Cancillería real, R. 557, ff. 1–2v; Romeu Alfaro, “Aportación,” pp. 388–90, 392. See also José Rius Serra, “Cortes de Valencia de

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make was clearly connected to a call for solidarity with the Aragonese. On February 22, 1357, months before the Valencian Corts opened, Pere wrote to Valencia, Jativa, and the “other royal villages of the kingdom of Valencia” to ask for their financial help to pay for 500 or 600 horsemen and up to 2,000 infantry soldiers for up to three months. The king claimed “we have not spared ourselves personally from hard work,” and, like any good ruler, he had “safeguarded ... the good government of ... [his]realms and lands” while he was struggling to win a “just and licit war” which he hoped God would bring to a “swift and good end.” The Valencian townsmen were thus called on to emulate their counterparts in Aragon who had suffered great losses in the war but had still persevered by “their labors and hosts.”18 When Pere finally reconvened the Cortes on January 8, 1358, he was infuriated to discover that the estates could not agree on how a subsidy for Valencia should be funded. When he demanded from them a “good and useful response,” the estates began to discuss seriously where the money would come from to support up to 500 border troops for the next two years.19 For the next several weeks, Pere waited with mounting frustration as the estates appointed two sets of “negotiators” (tractadores) who asked for a copy of the Cariñena grant to guide their own deliberations. With this model to go by, they finally came up with a plan for financing the frontier garrisons for the next two years and pledged that the funds would begin flowing some six months later.20 As he entered the third year of war with his “principal enemy,” Pere turned for help to his territory that had been least touched by the conflict, Catalonia. Because of the war Pedro “was waging and carrying out unjustly,” Pere now had to have Catalan “help and aid.” They were to be ready to give this openly and “without bringing up any excuse,” especially since the Castilian king was busy occupying large swaths of Aragonese borderland, including the important town, Tarazona. When the Aragonese king stood before the Catalan Corts at Barcelona on August 25, 1358, he was shocked by the absence of so many of his barons who had expressed no interest in “foreign wars” (that is, those fought outside of Catalonia) and were much more concerned in protecting themselves from the court clique headed by the royal favorite Bernat de Cabrera and his son and namesake, the count of Osona.21 Only after two months of frustrating delay

18 19 20

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1358 (20 de Febrero),” AHDE 17 (1946), 663–82; Silvia Romeu Alfaro, “Catálogo de Cortes valencianas hasta 1410,” AHDE 40 (1970), 581–607, esp. p. 593; Vicent Lluïs Samó Santonja, Les Corts valencienes, 1240–1645 (Valencia, 1997), p. 157. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1379, ff. 152v–53. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 557, ff. 3v–6; Romeu Alfaro, “Aportación,” pp. 392–95; Simó Santonja, Corts, p. 162. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 557, ff. 13v–25v; Romeu Alfaro, “Aportación,” pp. 406–27; Simó Santonja, Corts, p. 162. For the 1358 subsidy, see María Rosa Muñoz Pomer, “La oferta de las Cortes de Valencia de 1358,” Saitabi: revista de la Facultat de Geografia i Història, 36 (1986), pp. 155–66. Colección de las cortes de los antiguos de Aragón y de Valencia y del principado de Cataluña [hereafter CAVC]. ed. Fidel Fita and Bienvenido Oliver, 27 vols. (Madrid, 1896–1922), vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 505–21; Ramon d’Abadal i de Vinyals, Pere el Ceremoniós i

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spent in maddeningly torpid parliamentary procedure and in frustrating talks with his recalcitrant barons was Pere able to divert the attention of the Corts to the pressing matter of the “evil undertakings of the Castilian king.”22 With the election of eighteen negotiators on October 18, Pere had finally maneuvered the assembly into abandoning any further “shame and damage” through delay and entering into the funding phase of the meeting. Within a day, the Barcelona assembly agreed to a military subsidy that would be raised by a “hearth tax” (fogatge), an impost on every “household” (foch) in Catalonia, including the lands of Pere’s half-brother, Prince Ferran, which formerly had been exempt from such taxation.23 After his long stay in Barcelona, Pere spent Christmas in Lerida near the Aragonese border, but was forced to cut short his vacation because of Castilian troop movements. He hurriedly transferred the court to Zaragoza, which he entered on January 3, 1359, and ordered the Cortes to meet on January 22 in the Aragonese capital. On that day he came before the estates, warning them that he “could not sustain the war without [their] help.”24 To prop up the defense of the Aragonese borderlands, he demanded funds to pay for a hybrid force of 1,320 knights and 1,000 infantry for one month. As in earlier Catalan and Valencian meetings, the Aragonese estates took a much greater role in the collection and dispersal of war funds than the king intended, with the appointment of “deputies” (deputados) who had “full power” (pleno poder) to carry out their duties which would remain in effect for the length of the grant and thus last beyond the term of the Cortes. This effectively gave them powers and responsibilities normally reserved for royal officials. The parliamentary deputies thus fully supervised the collection of the war taxes, oversaw the recruitment of the required 2,320 troops, and periodically delivered their pay.25

22 23

24 25

els inicis de la decadéncia political de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1972), pp. 84–85, 88–89; Donald J. Kagay, “The ‘Treasons’ of Bernat de Cabrera: Government, Law and the Individual in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon,” in War, Government, and Society in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Aldershot, Hampshire, 2007), study VIII, pp. 39–54, esp. p. 41; J. B. Sitges, La muerte de D. Bernardo de Cabrera (Madrid, 1911), p. 5. For fiscal sessions of the Catalan Corts, see Manuel Sánchez Martínez, y Pere Orti Gost, Corts, Parlaments i Fiscalitat a Catalunya: els capítols del donatiu (1288–1384) (Barcelona, 1997). CAVC, I, pt. 2:534–36, 561–64. CAVC, I, pt. 2:623–99, 719–29; José Luis Martín,“Las Cortes catalanes en la guerra castellano-aragonesa,” in La Corona de Aragón en el siglo XIV [VIII CHCA], 2 vols. (Valencia, 1969–70), 2:79–90, esp. pp. 81–82. For fogatge, see J. M. Pons Guri, “Un fogatjament desconegut de l’any 1358,” Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 30 (1963–64), 322–498, esp. pp. 334–36. For Tarazona campaign, see Antonio Gutiérrez de Velasco, “La conquista de Tarazona en la Guerra de los Dos Pedros (Año 1357),” Cuadernos de historia Jerónimo Zurita 10–11 (1960), 69–98, esp. pp. 85–87; Pere III of Catalonia (Pedro IV of Aragon), Chronicle [hereafter Pere III], trans. Mary Hillgarth, ed. J. N. Hillgarth, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1980), 2:512–13 (VI:11–12). CRA, 37, 39; Pere III, 2:527 (VI:28). CRA, 40–42.

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Almost as soon as the king had temporarily attended to Aragon’s threatened borders, he was forced to deal with a far greater danger: Pedro’s formation of a huge Castilian, Portuguese, and Granadan fleet that he would unleash in the spring of 1359 on the Valencian and Catalan littoral as well as against the exposed Balearic Islands.26 To deal with this “urgent crisis and necessity” that directly touched the “good state and reformation of the principate of Catalonia,” Pere in May summoned another Catalan assembly for August 1 at Vilafranca de Penedes to the southwest of Barcelona. Because of the pressing Castilian threat during the summer, the Aragonese king put off the meeting for a full month and then again to Michaelmas (September 29). He again prorogued the meeting until the feast of Saint Luke (October 18) and changed the site to Tarragona on the Catalan coast below Barcelona. Because of “other unexpected matters,” including the stunning victory of Pere’s captain, Enrique de Trastámara, over Pedro and a small Castilian force near the Araviana River on August 29, the Aragonese king altered the meeting time of the Corts once more, to October 10, and changed its location to Cervera, a small town to the southwest of Tarragona.27 Meeting first with the Catalans on Saturday, October 12, he then spent over two months in impatiently waiting for the assembly to reimburse him for the “great expenses ... incurred because of the affairs of the war.”28 By December 18–19, the king had solved this problem by gaining another “free will gift” from the “provident and pure will” of the Catalans in the form of a

26

27

28

Pere III, 2:522–26; Pero López de Ayala, Coronica del rey don Pedro, ed. Constance L. Wilkins and Heanon M. Wilkins (Madison, 1985), pp. 104–5 (10th year, chaps. xii–xiiii). For Aragonese and Castilian naval development in the fourteenth century, see Manuel Calderón Ortega and Francisco Javier Díaz González, “Los almirantes sel ‘siglo de oro’ de la Marina castellana medieval,” En la España Medieval 24 (2001), 311–64, esp. pp. 314–15; José Ramón Cervera Pery, El poder naval en los reinos hispánicos (La marina en la edad media) (Madrid, 1992); Archibald R. Lewis and Timothy J. Runyan, European Naval and Maritime History, 300–1500 (Bloomington, 1990), pp. 72–77; Lawrence V. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Catalan: The Catalan–Aragonese Fleet in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville, 2003), pp. 196–204; Florentín Perez Embid, El Almirantazgo castellano hasta las Capitulaciones de Santa Fe (Seville, 1944); J. A. Robson, “The Catalan Fleet and Moorish Sea Power (1337–1344),” English Historical Review [hereafter EHR] 74, no. 292 (1959), 386–408, esp. pp. 402–04. For sea war with Marinids, see Eduardo Aznar Vallejo, “La guerra naval en Castilla durante la baja Edad Media,” En la España Medieval 32 (2009), 167–92; O’Callaghan, Gibraltar Crusade, pp. 129–36, 196–97; Florentino Pérez Embid, “La marina real castellana en el siglo XIII,” AEM 6 (1969), 141–86. CAVC, II:1–37. For battle of Araviana, see Ayala, Coronica, p. 108 (10th year, chap. xxii), Antonio Gutiérrez de Velasco, “La contraofensiva aragonesa en la Guerra de los Dos Pedros: Actitud militar y diplomática de Pedro IV el Ceremoniosos (años 1358 a 1362),” Cuadernos de Historia Jerónimo Zurita [hereafter CHJZ] 14–15 (1963), 7–30, esp. pp. 15–17; Jeronimo Zurita y Castro, Anales de la Corona de Aragón, ed. Angel Canellas Lopez, 8 vols. (Zaragoza, 1967–1985), 4:383–87 (IX:xxv). Pere III, 2:529 (VI:27); CAVC, II:39: Martín, “Cortes catalanes,” pp. 82–83. Pere is surely incorrect in saying that he first met with the Corts on October 8, since he had written from Barcelona that he would be in Cervera “without fail” on Saturday, October 13. As it was, he arrived a day early. The king remained in Cervera until December 20.

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fogatge to be assessed at ½ florin, 20 sous or 12 dinars per household.29 This amounted to an annual sum of 144,000 libras, which would maintain 1,800 horsemen on Catalonia’s threatened borders until May 1, 1361.30 This total was divided equally between the urban estate on one hand and the combined ecclesiastical and noble estates on the other. In the agreements hammered out with these bodies, Pere declared that the granting of such subsidies had a long history with the Catalan Corts in his own reign. Such assemblies had already supported his conflicts with the Genoese, against the warlike nobility of Sardinia, and now with his “public enemy,” Pedro of Castile.31 Beside the crucial matter of money, Pere also approved statutes issued by the Corts that disallowed lawsuits during the national emergency musters (Princeps namque), forbade private feuds during the war, with the threat of ejection from the peace and truce for the participants, and severely warned his subjects to avoid harboring deserters from his armies and fleets.32 As the war entered its fourth year in 1360 and a papal legate, Gui de Boulougne, attempted to establish an acceptable peace agreement,33 Pere was forced to plug holes in his southern frontier defenses, especially in the exposed borderland wedged between the Valencian capital and the Castilian outpost of Murcia. To recover “some castles [of the region] that had been unwarrantedly and unjustly occupied” by forces of the Castilian king, Pere commanded that a Cortes convene at Valencia on May 12, 1360. When he was drawn away by his troops’ recapture of Tarazona at the same time, he violated parliamentary custom and royal law by sending his ten-year-old son, the crown prince Joan, to preside over the meeting that convened in the Franciscan monastery at Valencia on the scheduled day. Sitting on a throne as the estates took their places, the prince turned over

29

30 31 32

33

CAVC, II:55–133, 391; Martín, “Cortes catalanas,” p. 83. For the coinage types mentioned in Pere’s war parliaments, see Joaquin Botet i Sisó, Les monedes catalanes, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1808–11); Robert I. Burns, S.J., Society and Documentation in Crusader Valencia, vol. 1 of Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia. The Registered Charters of its Conqueror, Jaume I, 1257–1276, 4 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ, 1985–2007), pp. 108–10; M. Crusafont i Sabater and A. M. Balaguer, “La numismática navarro-aragonesa alto medieval: Nuevos hipóthesis,” Gaceta Numismática 81 (1986), 35–66; Felipe Mateu Llopis, “Sobre el curso legal de la moneda en Aragón, Cataluña, Valencia, y Mallorca, siglos XIII y XIV,” in VII Congrés d’hisòria de la corona d’Aragó, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1962–64), 2:517–28. CAVC, II:383–85. Ibid., II:385–87, 389–90. CAVC, II: 41, 52; Martín, “Cortes catalanas,” p. 83 (note 11). For the national emergency muster, see The Usatges of Barcelona: the Fundamental Law of Catalonia, trans. Donald J. Kagay (Philadelphia, 1994), p. 80 (art. 64); Donald J. Kagay, “The National Defense Clause and the Emergence of the Catalan State: Princeps namque revisited,” in War, study 1, pp. 57–97; Manuel Sánchez Martínez, “The Invocation of Princeps namque in 1368 and its Repercussions for the City of Barcelona,” in The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2003), pp. 293–329. For Gui de Boulougne’s diplomatic mission in 1358–61, see Ayala, Coronica, pp. 99–101 (10th year, chap. v); José María Mendi, “La primera legación de Cardenal Guido de Boulougne a España (1358–1361),” Scriptorum Victoriense 12 (1964), 125–224; Zurita, Anales, 4:369–70 (IX:xxi).

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the opening ceremony to his cousin, Count Alfonso of Denia, who brusquely demanded more money for the Valencian war effort, which often seemed on the point of collapse. Though the estates quickly appointed negotiators to work out a subsidy, they soon felt Joan’s wrath for what seemed to him their do-nothing attitude. He warned them that Pedro was on the point of attacking the Valencian town of Orihuela and thus a force of 500 horsemen had to be dispatched immediately to thwart this offensive. Without this relief party, a “flowing multitude of Christians and pagans [Pedro I’s Muslim allies]” would spread “ruin and damage” across the land.34 Moved by the earnest appeal of the young boy, the Valencian estates set to work with a will, but in a way that would eventually make Joan’s father nervous. They appointed an “executive committee” (general) that would immediately name its own “deputies, syndics, and procurators.” This group had the responsibility of collecting the subsidy pledged by the Cortes, which came to 65,000 libras, but was also allowed to sell war bonds, float loans, recruit, station, and pay troops, and purchase provisions and other supplies for these troops. After some wrangling about the division of the grant among the estates, a final agreement was brought to Joan and the Cortes for final approval on June 7, 1360. Not fully satisfied with the salary arrangement for the 500 horsemen, Joan prorogued the meeting until November 1, when he hoped his father could be present. This later session, however, apparently never took place and this Valencian unfinished business moved Pere to seek a more general solution to his military finance problem. Despite the ultimate failure of the 1360 Cortes, it marked the beginning of Pere’s use of his family members as replacements in his national assemblies and demonstrated that the parliamentary executive committees in all his realms were not novelties, but had come to stay.35 When the papal legate finally nailed down a formal peace treaty at Terrer in May, 1361, Pere joyously prepared to abandon the gnawing responsibility of war. After Pedro abrogated the treaty with a surprise attack on Calatayud in July, 1362, the Aragonese king found himself in straightened fiscal circumstances once again and unable to put troops on his threatened frontiers.36 Unwilling to risk the delay and frustration of individual meetings of his major

34

35 36

Sylvia Romeu Afaro, “Cortes de Valencia de 1360,” AHDE 44 (1974): 675–712, esp. pp. 678–81, 684–90; Romeu Afaro, “Catalogo,” pp. 594–95; Simó Santonja, Corts, pp. ([0–9])64–67. For distribution of subsidies in the 1360 assembly, see María Rosa Muñoz Pomer, “Cortes y Parlamentos de 1360. Acuerdos y distribución de donativos,” Estudios en recuerdo de la profesora Sylvia Romeu Alfaro, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1989), 2:643–57. For Prince Joan, see Francisco de Asis de Bofarull y Sans, Generación de Juan I de Aragón (Barcelona, 1896), 22–29 (docs 1–2); Rafael Tasis i Marca, Pere el Cerimoniós i els seus fills (1957; repr., Barcelona, 1980), 165–67. For Count Alfonso of Denia, see Campón Gonzalvo, “Consecuencias,” 57–58. Romeu Alfaro, “Cortes de Valencia de 1360,” pp. 690, 700, 706–9; José Martínez Aloy, La Diputación de la Generalidad del reino de Valencia (Valencia, 1930), p. 145. For Peace of Terrer, see ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1074, ff. 129v–130; R. 1103, f. 83v; R. 1181, f. 73v; Pere III, 2:534–35 (VI:32); Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, Entre la paz y la guerra: La corona Catalano-Aragonesa y Castilla en la baja Edad Media (Barcelona, 2005), 396–412; Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, “The Southern Valencian Frontier during the War of

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lands, the Aragonese king turned to a theoretically known but practically untested form, the “parliament” (parlamentum), which gathered estates from Aragon, Catalonia, Majorca, and Valencia.37 To facilitate travel for the estates, he scheduled the meeting in the centrally located place of Monzón on the Aragonese border with Catalonia for October 12, 1362. After several delays, he convened the large assembly in the main royal castle on the hills above the city and across the Cinca River. Despite several postponements, the members of the various national delegations knew well what the king wanted, since he had repeatedly warned them in the preceding weeks that he would call for their aid concerning “subsidies, provisions, and other preparations for the [defense of the] commonwealth of our kingdoms and lands.”38 Meeting the large conclave divided by realm and estate on November 23, 1362, Pere asked his people to “help and stand by” their sovereign against the “iniquity of the Castilian king.” The members of many different national assemblies had grown used to this kind of crisis oratory and had come to know what was expected. Despite the appointment of negotiators whose job was the establishment of an over-arching grant that would pay for the many classes of captains and troops scattered across the Crown of Aragon’s borders, these appointees failed to make any progress in putting forth a subsidy acceptable to the entire body and were replaced on February 4, 1363 by thirty-three deputies elected from the estates of the four lands. Within two days, the new representatives brought to the floor a grant proposal for 250,000 libras to be collected over the next year in sums appropriate for the population and fiscal standing of the four lands. When Pere asked if the full parliament accepted the arrangement, they shouted “in a thunderous voice, ‘Yes! Yes!’ repeating it many times.”39 Even with the relatively pointless attainment of this declaration of acceptance, Pere’s anger was soon to flare against the estates of his several realms over a number of issues. Despite the great danger that faced the entire Crown of Aragon, Pere had trouble controlling his anger when faced with a “surfeit of debates and legal

37

38

39

the Two Pedros,” in The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, pp. 75–116, esp. p. 106. For surrender of Calatayud, see Zurita, Anales, 4:445–48 (IX:xlii). For the provenance of the term “parliament” in eastern Spanish political history, see CAVC, I, pt. 2:459; XI:465; Glossari general luŀlia, ed. Miguel Colom Mateu, 10 vols. (Mallorca, 1985), 4:84; Kagay, “Emergence,” pp. 228–29 (note 21); Esteban Sarasa Sánchez, La Cortes de Aragón en la Edad Media (Zaragoza, 1979), pp. 69–70. “Actas de las Cortes Generales de la Corona de Aragon de 1362–63,” ed. Josep María Pons Guri, in Colección de documentos inéditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragón [hereafter CDACA] ed. Prospero Bofarull y Moscaró et al., 50 vols. to date (Barcelona, 1877–), 48:13; Donald J. Kagay, “A Government Besieged by Conflict: The Parliament of Monzón (1362–1363) as Military Financier,” in The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, pp. 117–48, esp. p. 126. For layout of Monzón in the early modern period, see Richard L. Kagan, ed., Spanish Cities of the Golden Age: The Views of Anton van Wyngaerde (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 150–54. CDACA, 48:56–63; Ricard Albert and Joan Gassiot, eds., Parlaments a les corts catalanes (Barcelona, 1928), pp. 10–11; Suzanne F. Cawsey, Kingship and Propaganda: Royal Eloquence and the Crown of Aragon c. 1200–1450 (Oxford, 2002), p. 74.

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questions.” When his handling of the war became the subject of some of these parliamentary exchanges – if only indirectly – he shouted that “no knight, living or dead, could defend our crown [as we have].” In this same session of February 11, 1363, he accosted the estates by saying that if the frontier troops who faced danger daily should find out about the parliament’s shameful and selfish delays, they would order the entire assembly to follow the king to the endangered borders “on horseback, on foot, or only with the shirts on their backs.”40 Despite Pere’s explosive frustration, the Monzón parliament went about its work in its own plodding way. Most of the delay centered on the division of the general subsidy among the various realms and their estates. The Valencian delegation spent most of the second half of the meeting attempting to avoid responsibility for approval of yet another impost on their people by claiming that their credentials as parliamentary proctors did not allow them to agree to such a fiscal agreement. The Aragonese members wanted a fluid military grant, the collection of which would cease if the Castilians overran more of their threatened territory. The Catalan delegation broke into a bitter dispute between estates. The clerics and nobles fought over the extent of the subsidy that their ecclesiastical and aristocratic fellows at home would be bound to pay. At the same time, the representatives of the larger Catalan cities, Barcelona and Perpignan, attempted to shift these fiscal duties to the region’s smaller urban sites headed by Lérida. Suffering in silence through this confused parliamentary strife, the king finally saw the grant in its final form brought to the floor of the parlamentum on March 3, 1363. When he asked the large conclave if they accepted the grant, they answered “in a single shout, ‘It pleases us! It pleases us!’”41 All the royal frustration of the past five months had finally been rewarded with general military support – or so the king thought. After the immense effort of forcing long-term grants from all his lands in the Monzón assembly, Pere was soon disappointed on two fronts. The collection of such parliamentary subsidies invariably took longer than the scheduled term for this operation and even in regard to the collection of tax revenues, neither the king nor his officials exercised much control over how this money was used; this fell under the purview of the parliamentary deputies. Thus, even more financially embarrassed than he had been before the great assembly of 1362–63, Pere was forced to instruct his Sicilian-born queen, Elionor, to sell several of her properties, pawn her jewelry (yet again), and take out a short-term loan to help him make ends meet.42 Though given a much-needed respite from incessant war

40 41 42

CDACA, 48:63–64; Cawsey, Kingship, p. 137; Kagay, “Government,” p. 130; Albert and Gassiot, eds., Parlaments, pp. 25–26. CDACA, 48: 64–69; Kagay, “Government,” pp. 130–31. For Pere’s strategies of control over the deputies, see Gómez Lafuente, Reino, pp. 187–91. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1404, ff. 9, 16v-17v; José-Luis Martín, “Las Cortes de Pere el Cerimonioso,” in Pere el Cerimoniós i la seva època, ed. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona, 1989), pp. 99–111, esp. p. 107; Martín, “Cortes catalanas,” pp. 84–85. On April 22, 1357, Pere had instructed his wife, Queen Elionor, to pawn her banner and greatest jewels” to

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spending by the negotiation of yet another peace treaty, this time at Murviedro (modern Sagunto) on July 2, 1363, the Aragonese king was again quickly dragged back onto a war footing when Pedro violated the pact a few months later, forcing Pere to come once again before his assemblies, in desperate need of military funding.43 After spending Christmas of 1363 at Barcelona, Pere traveled to Zaragoza in the new year, and while at the Aragonese capital called a Catalan Corts for Tortosa on February 25, 1364. The reason for the meeting must have sounded all too familiar to the recipients of this summons: Pedro had violated the peace treaty and “without reason had occupied many castles, cities, and towns of Aragon and Valencia.” Thus for the “good estate, protection, and defense of their homeland, the king had to negotiate with the Catalan estates.44 Because of “certain pressing matters,” including Pedro’s siege of the Valencian capital and the “dangerous scarcity of food” that this caused across his southern kingdom, Pere had no choice but to set out for Valencia, leaving Queen Elionor, who served as governor and lieutenant general of Catalonia, to open the assembly, at Barcelona rather than in Tortosa, on March 10, 1364. The queen, a fine orator in Catalan, told the Corts that her husband was rushing to free his Valencian subjects from the Castilian “path of perdition,” and so she was standing in his stead. She then reminded the Catalans of how deeply their own land had suffered from Pedro’s naval raiders, and warned the hesitant estates that if Pere’s other territories fell to the Castilian invaders, Catalonia would quickly come under attack. Since the king’s exchequer was being stretched to breaking point by the Valencian campaigns, Catalonia would have to come up with 120,000 libras to defend its own frontiers for the next year. This sum, to be raised by yet another fogatge, would be used to pay frontier troops, and to fit out war galleys and compensate their crews.45 The Catalans grudgingly accepted the need for their help, but complained bitterly concerning the “great and intolerable expenses incurred on both land and sea,” saying that the population of the Pyrenean regions were not willing to pay their fair share of a military subsidy. After months of haggling, the divisions between the estates of yet another fogatge were brought before the full assembly on July 16, 1364. The system established for the collection of these funds was

43

44 45

help with the “immense expenses that weigh us down from the waging of the Castilian war.” ACA, Cancillería Real, R. 1152, f. 172; Documents Historichs Catalans del Segle XIV: Colecció de cartas familiars correspodents als regnats de Pere de Punyalet y Johan I, ed. Josep Coroleu (Barcelona, 1889), p. 59. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 728, f. 163; R. 1192, f. 9v; Masiá de Ros, Relación, 2:512–17 (doc. 229/151); Ferrer i Mallol, “Frontera,” pp. 285–89; Ferrer i Mallol, “Southern Valencian Frontier,” pp. 106–8; Zurita, Anales, 4:461–64 (IX:xlv–xlvi). Pere III, 2:542 (VI:37); CAVC, II:135–41. CAVC, II:148–50 (art. 1). For the career of Queen Elionor, see E. L. Miron, The Queens of Aragon: Their Lives and Times (London, 1913), pp. 187–96; Mark D. Johnston, “Parliamentary Oratory in Medieval Aragon,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 10 (1992), 99–117, esp. p. 106.

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so cumbersome that for the next six months after its approval Pere, still fighting in Valencia, grumbled that he was “in great need and peril for the lack of money.” He thus begged his long-suffering wife to recall the members of the Barcelona assembly and order them to come up with an initial installment of 20,000 libras to tide him over.46 Because of her husband’s desperate meddling, the queen emerged as a tragic and somewhat ridiculous figure over the next several months. Though she had already adjourned the Barcelona assembly, she ordered it to reassemble for All Saints Day (November 1), with the fervent hope that Pere could be present. When his plans changed due to military operation in southern Valencia, she moved up the meeting time for the Corts until October 18 and changed the site back to Tortosa, which was nearer the Aragonese and Valencian frontiers. When the king proved unable to keep even this appointment, Elionor reset the meeting date for November 4 and changed its site to Lèrida. When the meeting finally convened, neither the king nor the principal members of the first two estates were present and so the queen was forced to postpone the Corts again – this time until November 19.47 Furious at a problem much of which was of his own making, Pere took matters into his own hands, ordering the Catalans to meet him at Tortosa on January 5, 1365. Appearing in a parliamentary meeting for the first time in two years, the king suffered through three months of seemingly endless parliamentary procedure until April 7, when the peripatetic assembly finally gave him what he wanted by “exerting themselves most valiantly” with the vote of 350,000 libras, again to be raised by a hearth tax.48 Despite this grant, Pere’s constant campaigning around Orihuela and Murviedro in the first half of 1365 eventually depleted the funds that were trickling from parliamentary subsidies dating back to Monzón in 1363 and forced the king to call out another Catalan Corts for Barcelona on July 17. Because of his constant Valencian campaigning during the summer of 1365, the responsibility for running the meeting again fell to his long-suffering wife. “Sitting on a throne in royal garb,” in one of the large chambers of the royal palace in the Catalan capital, Elionor turned over the delivery of the opening speech to her counselor, Jaume de Faro, who said that the collection of the Tortosa fogatge had been badly botched and now the estates should turn to salt duties and the sale of future tax revenues to make up the difference. Unless this was done, Catalonia would “suffer irreparable damage” from the new fleet Pedro I was rumored to be forming in the Andalusian ports.49 Because many of Catalonia’s great nobles were on war service with the king, Elionor allowed lesser nobles to take their place – which, though expedient, was clearly against parliamentary precedent. When these procedural matters had been ironed out, the queen charged the assembly with “correcting and clarifying” the Tortosa subsidy, but also ordered them to find an additional 65,000 libras, over and above

46 47 48 49

CAVC, II:168–70. Ibid., pp. 179–80. Ibid., pp. ([0–9])81–204, 255–69; Pere III, 2:568–69 (VI:54). CAVC, II:332–36, 339–40.

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the Tortosa grant, which had to be raised by September through the use of another fogatge. According to the queen, this new and quite unexpected impost was to be used to support royal military operations in Valencia for the next few months. After enduring bitter complaints from the estates about the expenditure of new taxes for the defense of foreigners (as the Aragonese and Valencians were considered to be by the Catalans), the queen came before her parliamentary critics once more on August 4, 1365. “Vexed and burdened with great expenses,” they dictated to Elionor their own fiscal solution to fund royal military operations. To simplify matters, they offered all their own tax revenues for the next three years, but insisted that no man on active military service should be called on to pay this impost. They also demanded that the earlier fogatge of Monzón and that of Tortosa which had not been fully collected should be considered null and void, since all of Catalonia had already suffered great economic distress from the “great grants and subsidies already enacted for the defense of the commonwealth.”50 With the foul mood of the estates crystal clear to the queen, she postponed the assembly until August 22, when she met with the Catalans in the large chamber of Barcelona’s Franciscan monastery, normally reserved for the city’s administrative head, the Council of 100. Furious at the meeting’s “many intricacies, great delays, and postponements,” she screamed that her reasonable requests should have been fulfilled in “two or three days,” and if they had been, her husband and their king would then be safe. Elionor again demanded the immediate payment of the sum she had talked of in July, but now (surely through the king’s request) raised it to 100,000 libras. Calling together the assembly once more on August 24, she met her disgruntled subjects on the “cloister grass of the Franciscan monastery,” and heard their final terms, which must have been highly insulting to her. The estates were willing to raise 55,000 libras (the first sum demanded of them) “under certain conditions,” but they would not contribute an extra sou to fill out the higher amount. They also proved adamantly opposed to revisiting the Tortosa subsidy, which in their minds was clearly a dead letter.51 With in-fighting among the estates and the gathering hatred against the crown, the queen quickly seemed to lose control of the Corts, proroguing it fourteen times in the next three weeks. When she finally convened the assembly once more on September 21, the raucous estates would hardly let the queen speak. When silence was finally enforced, the Catalans witnessed one of the finest examples of a “harangue” (arenga) in eastern Spanish parliamentary history. Skillfully following the rules of rhetorical form to describe the dire threat to Catalonia from external invaders, Elionor reminded her audience of the many services the Catalans had rendered to the Aragonese crown in the past. At the

50

51

Ibid., pp. 353–57; Manuel; Sánchez Martínez, “Negociación y fiscalidad en Cataluña a mediados del siglo XIV: las Cortes de Barcelona de 1365,” in Negociar en la Edad Media, eds. Manuel Sánchez Martínez et al. (Barcelona, 2005), pp. 123–164. CAVC III:58–66. For the Council of 100, see Felipe Fernández Armesto, Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the city’s Past (Barcelona, 1991), pp. 28–30; J. Lee Shneidman, The Rise of the Aragonese–Catalan Empire 1200–1350, 2 vols. (New York, 1970), 1:197–99.

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end of the fifteen-minute speech, she dropped a bombshell of her husband’s making when she asked for yet another grant, this one to hire the Free Companies who were currently streaming across the Pyrenees in search of martial employment. Elionor then told her troublesome subjects that they had caused her “great anxiety, confusion, and sadness of heart.”52 With this bravura performance, the queen forced her advantage against the stunned estates, whose resolve quickly evaporated, leading them to revise the Tortosa grant and have these changes quickly approved in the last session of the Corts, a meeting attended by Pere, the crown prince, and the clearly exultant queen.53 In comparison with the dramatic events of the Catalan Corts of 1364–65, the Aragonese Cortes of the same period was carried out with less emotion, but was marked with the same schedule of disruptions occasioned by Pere’s absence on campaign in Valencia. First calling the Aragonese national assembly to Zaragoza for August 18, 1364, the king was forced to leave for the southern kingdom before the Cortes convened, and was not able to revisit his parliamentary duties in Aragon until the delayed Aragonese meeting finally opened on August 14, 1365 at Zaragoza. After failing to get his fourteen-year-old son, Joan, formally acclaimed as his heir and representative in Aragon by the conclave, he brought before the estates his principal reason for summoning the meeting: the funding of 1,000 knights for fourteen months of frontier service. Without much debate, the Aragonese agreed to the royal demand, but only on their own terms. They pledged 26,600 libras for the first three months and set daily military salaries at six or seven sous, depending on the equipment the horsemen possessed. They would also purchase from the subsidy proceeds all the provisions and equipment the border troops needed, but took care to set acceptable prices for these commodities. The impost collection would be carried out in each territorial district under the supervision of two urban citizens and a notary. Every two months, they and their fellows across the kingdom would transport the receipts to the cathedral of the Holy Savior at Zaragoza, where the money would be deposited in a strong box with four locks. An appointee from each of Aragon’s four parliamentary estates kept the keys. The head of the kingdom’s judiciary, the Justicia, inspected the tax rolls, acted as the paymaster for troops on active duty, and reimbursed soldiers for losses while on campaign, especially for horses. As in Catalonia, none of these funds from Aragonese ratepayers could be spent on “foreign” military operations, that is, for those outside of the kingdom. With this separation of powers, the deputies appointed by the Cortes saw many of their earlier duties decreased, but were still held responsible for preventing or punishing the “many frauds and uprisings” that were often spawned with the gathering and dispersal of so much money.54 52 53 54

CAVC, II:367–72; Albert and Gassiot, eds., Parlaments, pp. 27–33; Pere III, 2:272–73 (VI:57); Cawsey, Kingship, pp. 29, 116; Johnston, “Parliamentary Oratory,” pp. 105–9. CACV, II:372–76, 445. CRA, pp. 47–51, 56–60; María Rosa Muñoz Pomer, “Las Cortes de Cullera-Valencia de 1364,” Saitabi: revista de la Facultat de Geografia i Història, 35 (1985), pp. 87–94; Pere III,

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With the beginning of the Castilian civil war in March, 1366, Pere’s assemblies were freed from the onerous task of raising domestic military funds, but still had to deal with the passage of foreign troops through their territories. Fearful of the mercenaries who had sold their services to either Pedro I or Enrique de Trastámara (now referred to as Enrique II) and had already sacked the Aragonese town of Barbastro, an Aragonese Cortes held at Zaragoza in 1366 attempted to prevent “dangers and scandals” to the capital by setting up barricades across its major thoroughfares and routing the mercenaries through less-populated urban districts down to the Ebro River and toward Castile’s eastern border.55 Aragonese assemblies in the next year, first at Tamarite de Litera near Monzón and then at Zaragoza, took up the same issue of diverting mercenary troops traveling to and from the Pyrenean passes before and after the bloody conflict at Nájera (April 3, 1367).56 The Catalans, meeting at a Corts in Barcelona during October of the same year, did much the same thing to direct the Black Prince out of Spain, while keeping Catalan territory safe.57 The national assemblies of 1356–66 had proved critical both for Pere and for the development of parliamentary institutions in eastern Spain. Because of the need for constant supervision across extended periods which the war subsidies required, the Aragonese and Valencian Cortes and the Catalan Corts each developed an “executive committee” (diputacio, general) that could remain active long after the assembly proper had been adjourned by the king. This delegation, which was clearly a creature of the assembly proper and made up of some of its members who were given special and very specific duties, would quickly develop into a separate wing of parliamentary government.58 The temporary corps of deputies utilized to actualize the subsidy pledges of the full national assembly became a kind of “shadow government” that worked at all levels to raise and disperse these funds. At the top of this organization stood three

55

56 57 58

2:558–59 (VI:48); Zurita, Anales, IV:535 (IX:lxi). The Aragonese rejected Pere’s request to make Joan the governor of Aragon since this honor could not be bestowed until he was twenty-one. Kenneth Fowler, The Great Companies, vol. 1 of Medieval Mercenaries, 1 vol. to date (Oxford, 2001), p. 169. Mario Lafuente Gómez, “Comportamientos sociales ante la violencia bélica en Aragón durante las guerras con Castilla (1356–1375),” Historia instituciones derecho 35 (2008), 241–68, esp. pp. 260–61; Zurita, Anales, 4:535, 539 (IX:lxi–lxii). CRA, pp. 63–64. CAVC, III:16–28. Ferrer i Mallol, “Corts,” pp. 875–938; Kagay, “Government,” pp. 146–47; Ignacio Rubio y Cambronero, La Deputació del General de Catalunya, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1950), 1:135–53; Peter Rycraft, “The Role of the Catalan Corts in the later Middle Ages,” EHR 351 (1974), 241–69, esp. pp. 249–49; José Angel Sesma Muñoz and J. A. Armillas, La Diputación de Aragón: El gobierno aragonés del reino y la comunidad autónoma (Zaragoza, n.d.), pp. 27–45; José Angel Sesma Muñoz, “Las transformaciones de la fiscalidad real en la Baja Edad Media,” in XV Congrés d’història de la corona d’Aragó [El poder real en la Corona de Aragón (Siglos XIV-XVI)], 5 vols. (Zaragoza, 1993), vol. 1 (Ponencias), pp. 238–91, esp. pp. 386–89.

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or four men – depending on the number of estates in their national assembly – who remained in the capital and directed the entire subsidy administration. They kept accurate records of the tax collections, stored the funds in the capital or turned them over to bankers designated by the crown, sold war bonds, negotiated loans, marked all official documents with a “common seal,” paid frontier troops, punished the malfeasance of any deputies or their agents, and replaced deputies who had been removed for cause or who had died on the job. Although endowed with such farranging powers, they could not collect more than the amount of money agreed to by the national assembly nor could they spend or borrow money under the authority of the office that had nothing to do with the war effort.59 Though swearing to “conduct themselves well and loyally in their office” and not to make any false “deduction or diminution” from the subsidy funds, these temporary parliamentary agents were subject to powerful temptation in collecting and maintaining the huge sums agreed to in the national assembly. If such malfeasance was discovered, it was punished “in house” and not by the royal government.60 The underlings in the subsidy process consisted of the “collectors” (cullidores, culidors) who gathered the impost funds, the “distributors” (distribuydores) who transferred the money to central locations, the “receivers” (recebedores, reebedors) who took control of the tax receipts, locking them in specially designed strong boxes with multiple locks, the “overseers” (oidores, difinidors, administrators), and the “treasurers” (tesoreros, clavaris, consellers) who maintained general fiscal records based on the audits of the other officials. All of the parliamentary records referring to the subsidy process were turned over to officials of the royal treasury, but only after several years had elapsed. In one of the decade’s assemblies, that of Cervera in 1359, even this mark of good faith was avoided with the directive that after the term of subsidy collection had expired, all of its pertinent papers were to be handed to the administrators, who were instructed to burn all of these records “so they could not remain to be discovered in the future.”61 With this corps of parliamentary agents on the ground during the term of the subsidy, the deputies, far more than the royal officials, oversaw the entire military operation that posted troops along the Crown of Aragon’s frontiers that were in danger of Castilian attack. They paid the soldiers their wages, usually in monthly installments, checked the “muster lists” (mostres) provided by each unit’s commander, paid off individual “IOUs” (albaras, albaranes), and issued “estimates for the value of service mounts” (estimes). Because this last operation as well as the replacement of horses lost or wounded on campaign cost a good deal of money, the deputies began to have the service mounts branded, and

59

60 61

CDACA, 48:87–88, 90, 105, 130 (arts. 1, 3, 13–14, 20); CAVC, II:152, 154–57, 164, 168, 261, 275–79, 280–82, 284–86, 432 (arts. 9, 11, 15, 20, 22, 24, 26, 50–51, 68–69, 73, 76, 78–81, 85–87, 92); Kagay, “Government,” p. 137. CAVC, II:396–98. CDACA, 48:87–88, 90, 105, 108–9, 120, 130, 133 (arts. 1, 3, 7, 13–15, 20); CAVC, II:153–54, 262, 392–93, 395–98, 402, 422, 431–32 (arts. 9, 41, 52–54); Kagay, “Government,” p. 138.

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then used special herds maintained near the front to replace killed or wounded horses rather than providing monetary reimbursement to soldiers who had suffered the loss of a horse. Occasionally, the deputies in the field had to serve as quartermasters responsible for buying provisions in bulk and transporting them to the front.62 In any other situation, the deputies, like any other subjects of the Aragonese king, had to obey him or his agents in all matters that touched on national security. Because of the parliamentary statutes issued during the Castilian war that Pere, his queen, and the crown prince had to swear to uphold, these rulers and their officials had to give way to the administrative actions of the deputies in regard to the collection and use of pledged subsidies. If the king or his subordinates interfered with these parliamentary operations, the deputies were instructed by the estates not to obey any such royal orders.63 If this interference continued, the national assemblies would then declare the entire subsidy process null and void. Even with this built-in security, both the estates and the deputies remained worried that the crown would come to view their extraordinary efforts as a normal duty. To block this eventuality, they had written into every subsidy arrangement which they enacted a clause that stated that none of their actions in regard to the military impost could be considered by the crown as a legal precedent prejudicial to their age-old privileges. This also applied to the estates and their deputies, who could take no official or legislative actions that would infringe upon any urban “grants, privileges, liberties, usages, and exemptions.”64 In more than one of these parliamentary sessions, the estates were able to manipulate their king into making concessions which he surely had no intention of granting at the beginning of an assembly. At Cervera, for example, the king had to agree that he would refrain from extorting loans from the Catalans during the term of a subsidy, would waive all sorts of legal, commercial, and military fines during the same period, and would prevent his officials from intervening in the strictly local legal affairs of the clergy, nobles, and townsmen of the principate for the next five years.65 Though the collection of war funds began as an ad hoc operation, the overlapping terms of subsidies meant that their collection developed into a fiscal custom that the estates and their deputies developed and drew from their long experience in the Castilian war. Besides loans, future revenue sales, salt duties, and other money-making schemes, the estate assemblies of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia principally relied on the hearth tax, which was assessed at 10 to 20 sous or 12 dinars per household unit. These funds were not all collected at the

62 63 64 65

CDACA, 48:84, 87, 105, 116, 119, 131–33, 135, 149, 188 (arts. 5–6, 8, 11, 14, 18, 40, 54); CAVC, II:422, 431–32 (arts. 41, 53–54); Kagay, “Government,” p. 138. Lafuente Gómez, “Reino,” 190–91. CAVC, II:150–51, 160–62, 164–65, 295, 299–34, 391–92, 397–99, 401, 420, 436–40 (arts. 3, 26, 32, 34, 36, 39, 79, 86, 93, 107, 115, 121). CAVC, II:399–401.

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same time, but were staggered over several months. The collectors compiled extensive lists of householders that included both Jews and Muslims, but disallowed the mingling of payments between estates. Thus, churchmen largely paid into the subsidy with their ecclesiastical fellows, and this same distinction was applied to nobles and townsmen. If any of the householders proved unable to pay their full tax bill, the shortfall was divided by the collectors among an entire community or estate. The overlapping terms of subsidy collection between 1357 and 1365, along with the “great and immoderate expenses” which the conflict consumed, meant that the fogatge became an over-fished fiscal pond by the last year of the war and forced Pere III to look to even less-effective monetary sources and to long for peace.66 Pere III’s role in the remarkable parliamentary developments within the Crown of Aragon during the War of the Two Pedros seems to point to a strain of disastrous weakness. One modern historian has claimed that during this period the increasing power of Pere III’s assemblies was due to the fact that he had “lost the initiative in policy and finance.”67 In reality, the Aragonese king, who was militant without a taste for combat,” had little option than to surrender, at least temporarily, a good deal of his own power and that of his government in order to hold off a brutal enemy on as many as three fronts.68 Despite Pere’s submission to the parliamentary “shadow government” during the years of the Castilian war, his own administration remained, and at times was called on to get involved in the tax-collection process. On at least two different occasions (in 1359 and 1360), the Aragonese king had to step in when individuals and entire parliamentary estates refused to pay into the subsidies approved by a national assembly. Claiming that the accused were guilty of a treason by which the “direction of the war is thrown into disarray,” Pere instructed his own officials to “constrain by the exercise of justice” those who preferred non-payment of crucially needed subsidies to the seminal duties of both subjects and vassals. Any official who did not quickly carry out the king’s orders would incur his “ire and indignation” – never a baseless threat. In this way, Pere demonstrated that, even with the emergency powers gained by his parliaments, the royal government could ultimately claim superior power.69 From the vantage point of the national assemblies, the war years imposed on them an unprecedented burden, but provided an equally novel opportunity.

66

67 68 69

CAVC, I, pt. 2:629–725; II:55–133, 160–62, 293, 295, 300, 391–92, 395, 399, 401, 403–4, 406–7, 434–35 (arts. 4, 10, 15, 27, 33, 52, 54, 56, 58, 61, 75–76, 82, 92, 106, 108, 117); CDACA, 48:92, 100–1, 114, 120–21, 138 (arts. 2, 17, 23, 26, 29, 50, 53–54; Kagay, “Government,” pp. 134–35; José Iglesia Font, “El fogaje de 1365–1370,” Memorias de la Real Academia de Ciencias y Artes 34 (1962), 254–62; Martín, “Cortes catalanas,” pp. 85–86; Pons i Guri, “Fogatge,” p. 351. Bisson, Medieval Crown, p. 118. Ibid., p. 119; Kagay, “Government,” pp. 146–47. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1382, ff. 95v, 95, 145r–v.

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These bodies had been asked to raise military funds since the time of Jaume I, but as these commands became more frequent and called for ever-greater sums, the national assemblies responded by functioning as the kind of corporation they were already familiar with among the regular and monastic clergy as well as the military orders, the various ranks of the nobility, and the townsmen who, after all, made up the parliamentary estates. The deputies whom the estates chose to carry out the fiscal schemes they had voted for were very much like procurators, who had been essential to the functioning of the assemblies for over a century. They were given “full and sufficient power” to carry out the duties assigned them by their principals, the estates. Though these agents were thus limited by the members of the national assembly, they did not answer to the king or his corps of officials during the tenure of their office, which was constituted by the term of the grant. By this simple fact, the national assemblies which totally depended on the king for their existence were now given a permanent existence by the executive committees of deputies, eventually called the Deputació del General, Generalitat, and Generalidad in the various realms of the Crown of Aragon, which stretched down to modern times.70 In a sense, then, both king and parliament survived the long crisis, and, by doing so, pointed to the muchchanged government arrangement that would persist in eastern Spain until the accession of the Hapsburgs in the sixteenth century.

70

José Martínez Aloy, La dipoutación de la generalidad de Valencia (Valencia, 1930); Kagay, “Parliament,” pp. 146–47; Ignacio Rubio y Cambronero, La Deputació del General de Catalunya, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1950), 1:135–53; Peter Rycraft, “The Role,” pp. 241–69, esp. pp. 249–49; José Angel Sesma Muñoz and J. A. Armillas, La Diputación de Aragón: El gobierno aragonés del reino y la comunidad autónoma (Zaragoza, n.d.), 27–45; Sesma Muñoz, “Las transformaciones,” pp. 238–91, esp. pp. 386–89.

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Appendix. War Parliaments of the Crown of Aragon, 1357–65 Location, Title

Realm Represented

Opening Date Closing Date

War Funds and Troops Pledged

Cariñena Cortes

Aragon

July 30, 1357

700 horsemen – two years

Valencia (city) Cortes

Valencia

December 30, 1357

500 horsemen – two years

Barcelona Corts

Catalonia

August 25, 1358

fogatge

Zaragoza

Aragon

January 22, 1359

1,320 knights – one month

Catalonia

October 12, 1359

fogatge (½ florin, 20 sous, or 12 dinars per household)

1,000 infantry – one month

Cortes Vilafranca de Penedes/ Tarragona/

288,000 libras

Cervera Corts

1,800 horsemen – two years

Valencia (city)

Valencia

Cortes

May 12, 1360

65,000 libras (unpledged)

June 7, 1360

500 knights (unpledged) 250,000 libras – two years

Monzón

Aragon

November 23, 1362

parlamentum

Catalonia

March 3, 1363

Majorca Valencia Tortosa/

Catalonia

Barcelona

March 10, 1364

120,000 libras – one year

July 16, 1364

20,000 libras (unpledged)

Corts Tortosa/

Fogatge Catalonia

Lérida/

November 4, 1364

350,000 libras

April 7, 1365

Fogatge

July 17, 1365

65,000 libras

Tortosa Corts Barcelona

Catalonia

Corts

fogatge (unpledged) Revision of Tortosa grant

Zaragoza Cortes

Aragon

August 14, 1365

26,600 libras 1,000 knights – 14 months

4 Chasing the Chimera in Spain: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82 Douglas Biggs1

On 22 June 1381, Edmund of Langley, earl of Cambridge, at the head of a diverse expeditionary force that included English, Castilian, Gascon, and Portuguese elements, set sail from the Devonian ports of Plymouth and Dartmouth bound for Lisbon and eventually the Portuguese frontier with Castile. This expeditionary force was assembled and sent to Iberia as part of John of Gaunt’s grand strategy to make good his claim to the Castilian throne. In November 1382 Earl Edmund and what was left of his army returned to England in Castilian ships paid for by his one-time enemy, John I of Castile. Although contemporary English chroniclers found little to report in regards to the earl of Cambridge’s time in Iberia,2 modern historians, often drawing on Portuguese and Castilian chronicle sources that were critical of the English,3 have interpreted the Portuguese expedition of 1381/82 as one of the greatest failures of English arms in the middle stages of the Hundred Years War. A number of historians over the last century have devoted attention to Edmund of Langley’s time in Portugal. In 1904, Sidney Armitage-Smith argued that the “blundering half-measures of the Government [in London] and [Edmund of Langley’s] incompetence,”4 led to the failure of John of Gaunt’s grand strategy. Half a century later, in 1955, Peter Russell argued that the campaign was a complete disaster from the

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3

4

I wish to thank those who attended “The Soldier Conference: England’s Wars, 1272–1399” for their comments on a shorter version of this article. I am also grateful to Tiago Viula de Faria, who drew my attention to several articles by Portuguese historians that impinged on the campaign and kindly discussed a number of issues contained herein at length. The Westminster Chronicle, 1381–1394, ed. L. C. Hector and Barbara Harvey (Oxford, 1982); Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396, ed. and trans. G. H. Martin (Oxford, 1995); and Adam of Usk’s Chronicle, 1377–1421, ed. and trans. Chris Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997) all fail even to make mention of the Portuguese expedition. The only other major chronicle of the period, Thomas Walsingham’s, devotes only one brief paragraph to the entire episode. The St Alban’s Chronicle: Volume I: 1376–1394, ed. and trans. by John Taylor, Wendy Childs and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford, 2003), pp. 408–10. Fernando Lopes, The English in Portugal, 1367–87, ed. Derek Lomax and R. J. Oakley (Warminster, 1988). Pedro Lopez de Ayala, Cronicas Los Reyes de Castilla, ed. Cayetano Rosell, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1878). Sidney Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt (reprint: New York, 1964), p. 268. For his full discussion of the earl of Cambridge in Portugal in this period see pp. 260–69.

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outset, and every aspect of the expedition, from both a Portuguese and an English perspective, was lacking in proper guidance, effective organization and competent leadership. Edmund of Langley, Russell found, not only was possessed of “monumental stupidity”5 but also displayed “an almost incredible lack of intelligence” in Iberia.6 More recent scholarship relying less on chronicles and more on documentary evidence has moderated Russell’s judgmental opinions,7 and a number of most recent studies in both English and Portuguese have added to our understanding of this very complex and chaotic time in the Portuguese political world.8 In light of more recent studies, this article seeks to reinterpret Edmund of Langley’s Iberian campaign in a broader diplomatic and military context, and it will turn on three points. First, that the success of the campaign was compromised at the outset by diplomatic blundering on the part of the principals involved. The negotiations that resulted in the secret Treaty of Estremoz that John of Gaunt and Ferdinand I of Portugal signed in July 1380 were conducted at the same time that the Portuguese Cortes of Torres Novas (which broke up in August of that year) was meeting to secure a marriage alliance between Ferdinand I and John I of Castile.9 Thus, the Portuguese political community had been assembled to support,

5 6 7

8

9

Peter E. Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Reigns of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), p. 313. Russell, English Intervention, pp. 339–40. The most recent commentary on the expedition from the English perspective is Nigel Saul, Richard II (Yale, 1997), pp. 95–99. Saul makes no value judgments in regard to Langley’s leadership but generally adopts Russell’s version of events. Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (New York, 1992), pp. 113–14. See also, Anthony Goodman, “Before the Armada: Iberia and England in the Middle Ages,” in England in Europe, ed. Nigel Saul (New York, 1994), pp. 108–20. G. L. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England, 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), p. 415; Adrian Bell, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 19–20. Douglas Biggs, “‘A Voyage or Rather an Expedition to Portugal’: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82,” Journal of Medieval Military History 7 (2009), pp. 57–74. Joao Gouveia Monteiro, A Guerra em Portugal (Lisbon, 1998). Maria Joao Violance Branco, “The Nobility of Medieval Portugal (XIth–XIVth Centuries),” in Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne Duggan (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 223–45. Cesar Oilbera Serrano, Beatriz d Portugal: La Pugna Disastica Avis-Trastamara (Santiago de Compostella, 2005). Judite Antonieta Goncalves de Freitas, “The Royal Cancellery at the end of the Portuguese Middle Ages: Diplomacy and Political Society,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 7 (2009), pp. 1–23. Rita Costa-Gomes, The Making of a Court Society: Kings and Nobles in Late Medieval Portugal (Cambridge, 2003). Antonio Maria Braga de Macedo de Castro Henriques, “State Finance, War and Redistribution in Portugal, 1249–1527” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of York, 2008). Rita Costa-Gomes, Dom Fernando (Lisbon, 2009). Tiago Viula de Faria, “Tracing the ‘Chemyn de Portyngale’: English Service and Servicemen in Fourteenth-Century Portugal,” Journal of Medieval History 30 (2011), pp. 1–12. Antonio Castro Henriques, “The Rise of the Tax State: Portugal, 1371–1401,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 12 (2014), pp. 66. The diplomacy and the conduct of the campaign itself took place against a trying political backdrop of a divided Portugal and a vacillating and infirm king. Many Portuguese nobles were conscious and jealous of their hereditary rights and worked diligently to ensure that the Crown would not wield too much power over them. Branco, “Nobility of Medieval Portugal,” p. 233; Gomes, D. Fernando, pp. 171, 173.

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and give money for, one policy while the king was pursuing another. From the English perspective the alliance seemed solid but, rather than a committed Portuguese ally, what Edmund of Langley found upon his arrival in Lisbon in July 1381 was a royal court and political community deeply divided over the entire question of the war with Castile, the allegiance to the Roman pontiff, Urban VI, and the alliance with England. The second point concerns the earl of Cambridge’s time in Portugal. He brought a solid Anglo-Gascon force to Iberia and intended to use it to good effect. While Edmund of Langley demonstrated significant influence in the Portuguese political world, he found some issues to be beyond his influence and control. Nevertheless, through careful diplomacy and tact, the earl was able to convert some of his Portuguese political opponents to his cause, allowed his troops to conduct raids that were not devoid of success, defused a potential mutiny by his own troops, and left an imprint on the Portuguese military that lasted long after he had left Iberia in 1382. The last point of the article will consider the issue of the supposed mutiny by soldiers against Edmund of Langley in Portugal. Who were these mutineers and, as best as can be discerned, what effect did they have on events? In the end, it will be seen that Langley achieved some level of diplomatic, political, and military success in Portugal, even though the transformative military success that he sought eluded him. The diplomatic aspects of the earl of Cambridge’s ill-fated Portuguese expedition had their origins in the convoluted political world of the first five years of Richard II’s reign. John of Gaunt had claimed the Castilian throne through his wife Constance since 1371, and the fact that Edmund of Langley married her sister Isabel the following year meant that the two princes found it easy to allow their ambitions free reign in the Iberian peninsula. Even though Ferdinand I of Portugal had proven a less than reliable English ally on no fewer than three occasions before 1380,10 it suddenly seemed that a confluence of fortuitous events had occurred which enabled John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley to believe the situation in Iberia had turned in their favor.11 The opening salvos of the Great Schism in 1378 afforded a myriad of possibilities for diplomatic realignments in Iberia, and English intervention in Navarre against Castile that same year seemed to signal promise for the future of English arms there. In May 1379 Henry II died after a brief illness and left the Castilian throne in the hands of the seemingly weak and inept John I. King John appeared so unpopular with his nobility that Castile seemed to teeter on the verge of open insurrection and civil disorder. According to the Portuguese chronicler Ferdinand Lopes, King Ferdinand of Portugal sensed this weakness too, and wished to make war on Castile following the death of Henry II so as to exact

10

11

Ferdinand had been humiliated in 1373 following Henry II’s siege of Lisbon, which forced him to make a peace he did not wish. Violet Shilington, “The Beginnings of the AngloPortuguese Alliance,” TRHS, New Series 20 (1906), pp. 120–21; Edgar Prestage, “The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance,” TRHS, 4th Series 17 (1934), p. 73. Armitage-Smith thought these events provided Gaunt with “a golden opportunity,” John of Gaunt, p. 268.

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revenge for the late Castilian king’s victories over Portuguese arms in the previous decade.12 Thus, Ferdinand I opened negotiations with Richard II for a renewal of the alliance of the early 1370s, over and against the objection of his counsellors.13 As the new decade dawned political and military matters in France and Iberia, from the English perspective at least, seemed to only get better. On 16 July came the passing of France’s greatest fourteenth-century soldier, the Constable Bertrand du Guesclin. Du Guesclin’s death was followed a bare two months later, on 16 September, by that of Charles V, which left the French crown in the hands of his twelve-year-old son, Charles VI. With the most competent French politicians and military leaders gone, French policies were bound to drift. The stars seemed aligned for Gaunt and Langley to give free rein to their Iberian ambitions, and for Ferdinand to exact his revenge against his one-time oppressor. One key to understanding the way Anglo-Portuguese diplomacy flowed in these years rests with the person of John Ferdinand Andeyro.14 He was a Castilian nobleman and a supporter of Pedro the Cruel who had remained loyal to the king after his fall from power. Following Pedro’s murder he fled to Lisbon, where he gave his lands around the city of Coruna to Ferdinand I. However, it was not long before Henry II conquered these lands, and Andeyro and other Galacian noblemen became exiles clustered around the Portuguese royal court or earning their living as soldiers of fortune.15 Andeyro appears to have been more ambitious than most, and travelled to England, where he soon attached himself to John of Gaunt and Constance of Castile. He rose high in Gaunt’s councils and can be found at Gaunt’s court as early as 1371.16 Throughout the 1370s and into the 1380s Andeyro was a fixture at the Savoy and played an integral part in the negotiations first between Edward III and Ferdinand I, and then between John of Gaunt and the Portuguese king. John of Gaunt retained Andeyro in 1376 with a fee of £20,17 and the Galician exile was clearly part of a Lancastrian court culture that possessed European ambitions rather than merely English ones.18

12 13 14

15 16

17 18

Vincente Palenzuela, “Relations Between Portugal and Castile in the Later Middle Ages – 13th–16th Centuries,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 1 (2003), pp. 1–18. Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 58–59. Peter Russell traced his career and his relationship with John of Gaunt in his article, “Joao Fernandes Andeiro at the Court of John of Lancaster,” Revista de Universidade de Coimbra 14 (1938), pp. 20–30. Gomes, Court Society, pp. 120–21. Andeyro received a New Year’s gift of a silver goblet in 1372 from Gaunt, John of Gaunt’s Register, 1372–1376, ed. Sydney Armitage-Smith, 2 vols., Camden Society, 3rd Series, 20–21 (1911), 21: #915. John of Gaunt’s Register, 1379–83, ed. Eleanor C. Lodge and Robert Somerville, 2 vols., Camden Society, 3rd Series, 56–57 (1938), 1:8. Simon Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1991), p. 12. Russell, “Andeiro at the Court of Lancaster,” pp. 20–30.

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It seems that Gaunt and Langley thought quite a lot of Andeyro, who was perhaps twenty years the brothers’ senior, and the Castilian exile painted a picture of Iberian affairs that led the titular king of Castile to change English diplomatic policy. Neither Edward III nor the Black Prince had ever entered into Iberian affairs without the support of Aragon (usually along with Mohammed V of Granada).19 Although much diplomatic activity took place between Richard II and Peter III of Aragon throughout 1380, nothing came of these negotiations.20 In any event, it is possible that Andeyro argued to Gaunt that such diplomatic efforts in the direction of Aragon were superfluous. Peter III was old and sickly and there was going to be no possibility of Aragonese troops coming to Gaunt’s aid unless Aragon was directly attacked. The treaty of Estremoz that Andeyro negotiated with Gaunt in Ferdinand’s name was sealed on 15 July 1380,21 and was reinforced by a letter of promise from both Ferdinand and Queen Lenor to support Edmund in making war against Castile.22 The treaty provided for the Portuguese king to expect an initial force of English troops of 1,000 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers to arrive in Lisbon in 1381. They were to be paid by the English crown for one-quarter of a year and then Ferdinand would take over the burden of paying the men. Nevertheless, Earl Edmund put a significant amount of his own personal wealth behind the venture. On 4 May 1381 the earl received a letter patent giving his executors, in the event of his death, full income from his lands and his 500-mark annuity at the Exchequer to clear any debts that he would incur in Iberia.23 The English expeditionary force was to be billeted in towns and castles, and to undertake military operations against the Castilian king in conjunction with Ferdinand I to recover the lands rightfully belonging to John of Gaunt. Most importantly, the treaty provided for the marriage of Edmund of Langley’s young son, Edward of Norwich, who was eight years old, to Ferdinand’s daughter, Beatrice.24 Thus, if Ferdinand I died while Langley’s son Edward was still a minor, Edmund of Langley would have become the de facto ruler of Portugal. When this scheme is combined with Gaunt’s plan to invade the seemingly unstable kingdom of Castile from the Bordealais, there was reason to hope that the two Iberian kingdoms would swiftly fall into the hands of Plantagenet princes. Historians have tended to disparage this scheme as being impossible,25 but it is worth noting that the impossible had been achieved before. The world had been turned upside down by English victories at Crécy and Poitiers, 19 20 21

22 23 24 25

Joseph O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, 1975), p. 526. Russell, English Intervention, pp. 283–301. The original treaty dated 15 July 1380 in Portuguese is preserved in two copies the National Archives, TNA E 30/398A and TNA E 30/1283. For a printed text of the treaty see, Thomas Rymer, Foedera, 10 vols. (London, 1750), 3:103–04. Richard II confirmed and English alliance with Ferdinand I on 14 May 1381, Foedera, 3:120. TNA E 30/1282. CPR, 1381–1385, p. 8. The treaty also stipulated that Edward of Norwich would have become joint ruler of Portugal after Ferdinand I’s death. For a discussion of the treaty, see Russell, English Intervention, p. 299. Russell, “Andeiro at the Court of Lancaster,” p. 21.

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and then had been transformed into political and diplomatic reality by the treaty of Brétigny and the Peace of Calais. Who was to say that it could not or would not happen again? If the diplomacy that sent Edmund of Langley to Portugal was questionable, if not flawed from the outset, the earl’s conduct of the campaign was not. The army that he led to Portugal was a robust one.26 In late 1380 the English government roughed out a force composed of 1,500 men-at-arms and an equal number of archers.27 These numbers were enhanced even further by the end of January 1381 to include 1,903 men-at-arms and 1,589 archers, for a grand total of 3,492 men.28 As armies from the third quarter of the fourteenth century went, Langley’s force was heavy in men-at-arms, since most forces raised in this period tried to keep the ratio of men-at-arms to archers at 1:1.29 This force was created through ten indentures for war, with Earl Edmund himself;30 Sir William Beauchamp;31 Sir Matthew Gournay;32 Sir Thomas Fychet;33 Sir Thomas 26

27 28 29

30

31

32

33

James Henry Ramsay, “The Strength of English Armies in the Middle Ages,” English Historical Review 29 (1914), pp. 221–27; A. E. Prince, “The Strength of English Armies in the Reign of Edward III,” English Historical Review 46 (1931), pp. 353–71. TNA C 47/2/49/2. Lokington accounted to the Exchequer for nearly £7,000 in wages for troops on 2 August 1381, Anthony B. Steel, Receipt of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 44–45. Andrew Ayton, “English Armies in the Fourteenth Century,” in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, ed. Anne Curry (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 21–38. Adrian Bell, Anne Curry, Andy King and David Simpkin, The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 2013), pp. 95–96. On 27 January 1381 Edmund of Langley received an indenture of receipt for £1,721 12s 10d for his soldiers’ wages (TNA E 43/609). On 26 February 1381 the Issue Roll records a payment of 1,000 marks at the hands of his receiver, John Lincoln (TNA E 403/483, m. 19), which was supplemented by another £880 drawn out of the Exchequer on 6 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 23). The payments of the 1,000 marks and the £880 entered on the Issue Roll for Edmund of Langley were not additional revenue for wages but, rather, represented only a portion of the total of £1,721 to come from the Exchequer and which was allocated out of the treasury in convenient installments over time. For the brief biography of Edmund of Langley by Beltz see, George F. Beltz, Memorials of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (London, 1841), pp. 136–40. Sir William Beauchamp received an indenture for war on 24 February 1381 (TNA E 101/70/ 2/615), and he drew £857 10s 8d on 22 January 1381 (TNA E 43/578). His receiver, William Bettenham, drew £433 6s 8d out of the Exchequer on 26 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 19), and £440 more on 6 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 19). For his relationship with John of Gaunt, see Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 19, 72, 110, 264, 272. Although no indenture for war for Gournay survives, an indenture acknowledging his receipt of £867 12s 4d on 24 February 1381 does (TNA E 43/591). The Issue Roll records a payment to his receiver, Peter Skidmore, of £433 6s 8d on 26 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 19) and £440 more on 6 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 23), and a further £450 at the hands of John Gentry on 8 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 24). Sir Thomas Fychet received an indenture for war on 24 February 1381 (TNA E 101/70/2/ 614), and an indenture of receipt of £144 12s 4d on 23 January 1381 (TNA E 43/612). The Issue Roll records a payment of £66 13s 4d at the hands of his receiver, Thomas Edyngton) on 28 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 19), and a further payment of £44 on 8 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 24). Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, p. 269.

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Symond;34 Bermond Arnaud de Preissac; the Sultan of Trau;35 Thierry “the Canon” Robessart, a veteran of the Free Companies;36 Fernando Rodreguez and John Alfonso;37 John Andeyro;38 and John Gutieriez, Bishop of Dax.39 There was no want of military experience among these captains. Not only were all of them veterans of many campaigns, but many were familiar with Iberian affairs and a number had served with the earl of Cambridge in the past. Edmund of Langley himself had begun his military life in 1359 at the age of seventeen. The earl had spent much of the 1360s and 1370s fighting in France alongside his father and elder siblings, or leading his own expeditions. Although Anthony Tuck argued that “Edmund would do anything in battle except actually fight it,”40 contemporary accounts and his physical remains demonstrate otherwise.41 Sir William Beauchamp served as the army’s constable, and had the task of bearing John of Gaunt’s royal Castilian banner. He was one of Gaunt’s most important retainers.42 He had served with Gaunt at Nájera in 1367 and on the duke’s great – if fruitless – chevauchée through France in 1373. Beauchamp has

34

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40 41

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Sir Thomas Symond received an indenture for war on 24 February 1381 (TNA E 101/68/8/ 199), and an indenture of receipt for £29 12s 8d on 22 January 1381 (TNA E 42/191). The Issue Roll records a payment of £40 which he himself received on 28 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 19), and a further payment of £26 13s 4d at the hands of Thomas Edyngton on 8 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 24). Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, p. 282. The Sultan of Trau received an indenture for war on 24 February 1381 (TNA E 101/68/8/ 197), and an indenture of receipt for £384 4s on 23 January 1381 (TNA E 42/261). The Issue Roll records a payment to him of £133 6s 8d at the hands of Richard Merlyng on 26 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 19), and a further payment at his own hands on 8 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 24). Robessart received an indenture for war on 23 January 1381 (TNA E 101/39/22), but his indenture of receipt of monies does not survive. The Issue Roll records a payment to him of £133 6s 8d at the hands of Thomas Rotheby on 28 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 19), and a further payment of £86 at Rotheby’s hands on 8 April (TNA E 403/483, m. 24). Rodreguez and Alfonso received an indenture for war on 24 February 1381 (TNA E 101/68/ 8/198) and an indenture of receipt for £212 15s 6d on 22 January 1381 (TNA E 101/39/18). No record of payments out of the Exchequer to either of these men, or their receiver, may be found. Although no indenture for war for Fernandez survives, he received an indenture of receipt for £488 4s 8d on 22 January 1381 (TNA E 43/590). The Issue Roll records payment to him at the hands of Alfonso of Spain of £133 6s 8d on 28 February 1381 (TNA E 403/483 m 19), and a further £176 on 8 April 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 23). Peter Russell identified him as John Ferdinand Andeyro (“Andeiro at the Court of Lancaster,” pp. 29–30), but Edouard Perroy was not so sure: L’Angleterre et le grand schisme d’Occident (Paris, 1933), pp. 218–20. Although neither an indenture for war nor an indenture of receipt of money survives for Gutieriez the Issue Roll records a payment of £817 6s 8d at the hands of his receiver William Fernandez on 6 April 1381 (TNA E 403/483, m. 23). J. A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), p. 8. When Edmund’s tomb was opened in 1877, Professor George Rolleston, Linacre Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Oxford, examined the contents. In his opinion, Edmund of Langley’s skeleton showed the signs of multiple wounds either from battle or from tournaments. John Evans, “Edmund of Langley and his Tomb,” Archaeologia 96 (1885/86), p. 325. Beltz, Order of the Garter, pp. 227–31.

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also served under Sir John Chandos in 1375, and his position among the armigerous was such that he was invested with the Order of the Garter a year later.43 Although Anthony Goodman suggests that Beauchamp’s relationship with Gaunt ended abruptly in 1374,44 Sir William’s presence on the Portuguese campaign, combined with his solid support of Henry IV until his death in 1411, suggests that the bonds between Beauchamp and the House of Lancaster were strong to the end of Sir William’s life.45 Sir Thomas Fychet and Sir Thomas Symond, who rounded out the English captains, were well known to the earl of Cambridge. Fychet had served in Edward, Lord Despenser’s contingent between 1372 and 1374,46 and been a part of Edmund of Langley’s 1375 French expedition.47 Symond had served with Sir Robert Knolles in France in 1370, and then in Edmund of Langley’s contingent that went to France in 1372.48 Thierry “the Canon” Robessart was a Hainaulter who had come to England in the service of Queen Philippa. He fought on a number of campaigns with the English in the 1350s and 1360s, including the Nájera campaign, and was used as an ambassador by Richard II in the 1370s and 1380s.49 Bermond Arnaud de Preissac, the Sultan of Trau, was a Gascon who had been with the Black Prince at Poitiers in 1356 and at Nájera in 1367. Throughout the Black Prince’s tenure as Prince of Aquitaine Arnaud had been one of Prince Edward’s closest friends and confidants.50 Arnaud’s military experience was substantial by 1381 and his standing within Richard II’s inner circle was such that in 1380 he was appointed as a Knight of the Garter.51 The final portion of the expeditionary force was the Castilian-exile contingent totalling 470 men, or about 17% of the force. The captains of these companies ranged from important political figures with their own ambitions, such as John Andeyro and John Gutieriez, bishop of Dax, down to two Castilian knights in Gaunt’s service, Ferdinand Rodreguez and John Alfonso.

43 44 45

46 47 48 49

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Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, p. 72; Russell, English Intervention, p. 302; Charles Ross, “The Yorkshire Baronage” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Oxford University, 1950), p. 246. Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 279. He was made Lord Abergavenny in 1389 and remained close to the house of Lancaster after serving on many commissions and undertaking other duties in support of Henry IV. Douglas Biggs, “Then You Perceive the Body of Our Kingdom: The Royal Affinity of Henry IV, 1399–1413” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1996), p. 243. TNA E 101/32/26, m. 3. TNA E 101/34/5, m. 2. For his service with Knolles, see TNA E 101/30/25, m. 1. For Symond’s service with Langley, see TNA E 101/32/20, m.1. Robessart served as an ambassador to the duke of Jülich in 1379, to the count of Flanders and Holland and duke of Brabant that same year, and to the count of Holland in 1387. Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed. Edouard Perroy, Camden Society, 3rd Series, vol. 48 (1933), #4, 5, 78. H. J. Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355–1357 (Manchester, 1958), p. 215. Beltz, Order of the Garter, pp. 264–69.

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Although Russell argued that such a heterogeneous force was bound to lead to difficulties of command and control in the field,52 Edmund of Langley’s army was not unlike other forces that were deployed in the Iberian Peninsula throughout the last half of the fourteenth century. The Black Prince’s expedition in 1367 contained Gascon, Castilian, and English elements.53 Henry of Trastamara’s army of the same date contained French, Castilian, and Aragonese troops, and the forces led by Pedro “the Cruel” in 1368/69 contained Castilian, English, Genoese, and even Muslim forces from Grenada and North Africa.54 Although the army that Edmund, earl of Cambridge led to Iberia in 1381 was a solid one full of veteran leadership, the political world that the earl and his army entered was a chaotic one. Reaching Lisbon in early July put Edmund of Langley at the very epicentre of the Portuguese political world and Portuguese dynastic politics. The 1370s and 1380s were a very fluid time in Portuguese politics because of the influx of Castilian nobles,55 and the arrival of the English army in July 1381 added another faction to the already chaotic Portuguese political community. Nevertheless, affairs seemed to begin well for the English cause in the first weeks after their arrival. It seems that Ferdinand I and Edmund of Langley were well disposed towards each other from the outset, and perhaps their shared love of hunting and hawking helped to form a bond between them.56 The fact that Edmund knighted Ferdinand I on the eve of the “battle of Badajoz” in August 1382 also speaks to a strong and positive personal relationship between the two men.57 The king saw to the AngloGascon force’s being well taken care of, and ordered the city of Lisbon to commit some of the taxation it owed the crown to buy wine for Edmund of Langley and his army.58 It can be demonstrated that the earl of Cambridge carried much weight with the king and within the Portuguese political community throughout most of his time in Iberia. Lopes claimed that Edmund took many Portuguese knights into his household,59 and as the months passed the earl was called to counsel Ferdinand I on several occasions.60 One of the best measures of Edmund of Langley’s standing within the Portuguese political community may be evidenced by his intercession with the king following the arrest of both Sir Ferdinand Gomes and King

52 53 54 55 56

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Russell, English Intervention, p. 303. Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 14–42. Russell, English Intervention, p. 147. Gomes, Court Society, pp. 120–21. Gomes notes that hunting was one of Ferdinand I’s passions and he spent much money on the sport (Gomes, Court Society, p. 196), while Edmund of Langley’s love of hunting and hawking comes from an often-quoted passage from John Hardyng, The Chronicle of John Hardyng (London, 1812), pp. 340–41. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 139. Henriques, “State Finance and War,” p. 211. Froissart claimed that Thierry “the Canon” Robessart told Edmund of Langley in early 1382 that they had been “marvelously well taken care of : : : [but had] never received any money,” Froissart, Chronicle, p. 688. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 121. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 123.

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Ferdinand’s half-brother, John, the master of the military order of Avis. Gomes, who accompanied the Canon Robessart on a raid into Castilian territory, greatly angered the king and Ferdinand placed him under arrest.61 The falling out between the king and his half-brother, John, Master of Avis, over the war policy with Castile also angered Ferdinand to the point that John of Avis too was placed under arrest. Lopes claims that things would have gone ill for both Gomes and the Master of Avis, had not they appealed to Edmund of Langley, who intervened on their behalf.62 Edmund travelled to the royal court at Santarem from his headquarters on the Castilian frontier near Villa Viscoa and used his influence with King Ferdinand to gain the release of both Gomes and John of Avis.63 Not only did Edmund successfully intercede for the master of Avis’ life, but he clearly befriended John. After the master’s release and his meeting with Earl Edmund, John of Avis not only reversed his anti-war stance but even joined the Canon Robessart with a significant force of Portuguese knights, men-at-arms, and archers for the canon’s next raid into Castilian territory. The friendship between Edmund of Langley and John of Avis appears to have been strong and, following the death of Ferdinand I in 1383, the master of Avis wanted to quit Portugal and the political chaos there and travel to England to fight for Richard II because he had such good friends in England.64 The only English friend of equal social status that John of Avis would have met before 1383 was Edmund, earl of Cambridge. It is also clear that the master of Avis was impressed with Edmund of Langley’s military prowess. Lopes credits Edmund of Langley with bringing “modern” methods of warfare to Portugal, specifically battlefield deployment with forces divided into a van, a main body, and a reserve. In fact, the master of Avis was so impressed with Edmund’s military deployment that as King John I of Portugal he copied the well-known English style of army deployment and used it to defeat the Castilians at Aljubarrota in 1385, which secured Portuguese independence.65 While the earl of Cambridge’s influence in the Portuguese political world is not difficult to demonstrate at one level, it did have its limits and these helped to slow down and stifle military operations. One of the limits on the earl’s influence was his erstwhile ally, John Andeyro. Russell thought that his elevation to be count of Ourem in December 1381 meant that he had abandoned the earl of Cambridge for his own ambitions at that time.66 Andeyro had begun a notorious affair with 61 62 63 64 65

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Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 107. Froissart calls him Ferrand but the stories are so similar that it is most likely the same knight, pp. 687–88, 691. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 107. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 121. Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 166–69. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 180. Indeed, the Portuguese deployment at Aljubarrota with archers on the wings and men-at-arms in the center behind concealed pits is reminiscent of classic English deployments from the Hundred Years War. João Gouveia Monteiro, “The Battle of Aljubarrota (1385): A Reassessment,” Journal of Medieval Military History 7 (2009), 75–103. Russell, “Andeiro at the Court of Lancaster,” p. 30.

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Queen Leonor de Teles, possibly in the spring of 1381. Many thought that their liaison produced a son, who was born on 19 July 1382, and Andeyro’s standing in the royal court was such that he was named co-regent with Queen Leonor after Ferdinand’s death. A second limitation on Earl Edmund’s influence on Portuguese affairs rests in the defection of the Castilian exile, John Gutierrez, bishop of Dax. Gutierrez had joined Gaunt’s household after the duke’s marriage in 1372 and rose high in his counsels. Following Ferdinand’s change of allegiance to the Roman pontiff, Urban VI made Gutierrez bishop of Lisbon, in spite of the fact that the sitting bishop appointed by Clement V, Martin of Zamora, remained in place. Gutierrez too left Edmund’s army and looked to his own interests rather than those of Edmund of Langley or John of Gaunt. The loss of these two captains, and most likely also of the two Castilian knights (John Alfonso and Ferdinand Rodreguez), was of great significance to Langley’s cause. It removed a total of 232 men-at-arms and 237 archers from Langley’s force; a total of 469 men or 17% of Earl Edmund’s total army.67 Not only did their loss deplete the army’s ranks, but it also removed two important captains with the most Iberian military and diplomatic experience from Langley’s host, which only served to make things more difficult for the earl and his cause. A third limitation of Edmund’s influence on affairs centers on Edward of Norwich’s marriage. In spite of what appears to have been a good relationship between the king and the earl, Ferdinand was slow when it came to alienating lands that he had promised to Edmund of Langley.68 As an heiress, the Infanta Beatriz came with a healthy dowry that Ferdinand transferred to Earl Edmund only on 15 November 1381, well after the marriage in July,69 and young Edward remained with the king and his wife rather than with Edmund on the frontier.70 Thus, any move against royal wishes, such as personally leading an expedition into Castile before the king was ready, could have had dire consequences for Edmund of Langley and his eldest son. The conduct of the campaign itself became bogged down for military and logistical as well as political reasons. Ferdinand Lopes claimed that a lack of mounts for Edmund of Langley’s expeditionary force slowed movement to the frontier,71 and while it is possible that the lack of horses slowed the campaign, it

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It is difficult to know exactly how far down this defection to individual soldiers’ own interests went. Russell claimed that most of the Castilian exiles either made their peace with John I of Castile or, like Ferdinand Alfonso de Zamora (who joined the retinue of Ferdinand I) or John Alsonso de Baezea, joined John of Aviz. Russell, English Intervention, p. 343 n. 1. There seems little doubt that Edmund of Langley received a significant amount of wealth as part of Beatrice’s dowry, but it is not known how much income he realized from these estates or how he spent the money. Russell, English Intervention, p. 319. Froissart, Chronicle, p. 693. Monteiro has demonstrated that Ferdinand’s operatives were busy gathering horses for Edmund’s army as late as December 1381. Monteiro, Guerra em Portugal, p. 156. Ayala, Cronicas, 2:75.

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seems more logical to assume that a combination of events delayed AngloPortuguese moves toward the frontier. In late July, John of Castile had crossed the border with a significant force. He then besieged the Portuguese frontier fortress of Almedia, about 220 miles from Lisbon, which fell to him on 9 August. Ayala claimed that John I sent a message to Ferdinand and Edmund offering open battle at a place of their choosing,72 but Lopes makes no mention of any such challenge on the part of the Castilian king. It is possible that King John halted due to ill health,73 or a fear that John of Gaunt might be lurking in the Bordealais, but it is also possible that internal divisions within Castile kept King John from venturing too far into Portugal.74 What can be said with some certainty, however, is that King John had some fear of his English opponent. In late August 1381, in letters to Peter III of Aragon, King John expressed open concern as to the military potential of the 2,000 men-at-arms under Edmund of Langley’s command.75 In wisdom or in great folly, the reputation of the English man-at-arms in Iberia after Nájera cast a long shadow.76 Whatever the case, King John chose not to advance, for fear of getting himself embroiled in a campaign further southwest into Portugal. A second factor that delayed a more vigorous prosecution of the war was Queen Leonor Teles and her family. In early 1382 the queen announced that she was pregnant.77 Many in the Portuguese political community believed that the child was John Andeyro’s and not the king’s,78 which threatened the current political and diplomatic reality of Iberia. If the queen were to deliver a son, whether it was Andeyro’s or not, then both the decision of the Cortes of Torres Novas, which had betrothed Beatrice to John I’s son, and the betrothal of Beatrice and Edward of Norwich via the Treaty of Estremoz would be rendered moot. Thus, all concerned had good reason to wait on the queen.79 The queen’s family was a concern because her brother, John Teles, had been captured at the battle of the Guadina on 17 June 1381, along with some 6,000 sailors and twenty galleys. The men were dragged off to prison in Seville. The fact that John Teles lay in John of Castile’s hands weighed heavily on the queen’s mind, and her

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Ayala, Cronicas, 2:76. Russell claimed that John fell ill with a liver complaint and was “in some danger of dying in the field.” English Intervention, p. 315. Monteiro, Guerra em Portugal, p. 524. Russell, English Intervention, p. 314. L. J. Andrew Villalon, “Spanish Involvement in the Hundred Years War and the Battle of Nájera, 1367,” in Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay (Leiden, 2005), p. 36. The child, a son, was born on 19 July 1382, and thus Queen Leonor would have conceived her son sometime in early or mid November 1381. Russell, English Intervention, p. 334. Queen Leonor’s son died after only four days. Some claim that the king ordered the child murdered, but whatever the case, political equilibrium was restored with the child’s death. Russell, English Intervention, p. 334, n. 1; Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 129–31.

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brother’s release was one of the most important provisions of the 1382 peace treaty after the “battle of Badajoz.”80 While the main actors waited on the queen to deliver a child, ancillary events occurred that impacted on the campaign. In late December 1381 Langley moved his headquarters to Villa Viscosa, about thirty-five miles from the Castilian border. Ferdinand and the court remained at Santarem, one of the king’s favourite residences, about 130 miles away from Langley in the Tagus valley.81 The reasons for this divided deployment are unclear, but keeping the Portuguese army at Santarem did act as an effective block to John of Castile’s moving down the Tagus valley from his position at Almedia, about 180 miles distant. Perhaps the king and Edmund of Langley hoped that by moving the Anglo-Gascon force to the frontier about 187 miles south of Almedia, they would draw John I and his Castilian army away from Almedia to the south. Once Edmund’s force reached the frontier they began to conduct raids. Froissart claimed that Ferdinand had forbidden any raiding of Castilian territory, and the king withheld the Anglo-Gascon soldiers’ pay to express his royal displeasure with the English for disobeying him.82 Plundering the local countryside and raiding were, of course, common practice for all armies in the Hundred Years War. The Black Prince allowed the plundering of the Anglo-Gascon frontier during the winter months of 1355–56,83 and there is no doubt that the pain and suffering endured by the local populace at the hands of raiding enemies worked in bringing the enemy to battle again and again.84 There is no doubt that Earl Edmund did not take part in any of these raids personally; like his elder brother in Gascony in 1355, such things were beneath him. But, just as importantly, if Ferdinand forbade such raiding, Cambridge needed deniability, and with his eldest son still at Ferdinand’s court, the earl could use the excuse that he could not control his men, rather than frustrate the king and the anti-war faction at court. While historians have seen these military excursions as raids in force,85 these were more than mere raids. Upon reaching the Castilian frontier in late December 1381, Edmund of Langley moved into the monastery of St. Augustine in Villa Vicosa, about fourteen miles from the border and thirty-five miles from Badajoz, the nearest Castilian border town of any size. The remainder of the English force was billeted in Borba, Estremoz, Evora, and smaller towns nearby.86 While Ferdinand ordered no action to be taken against Castilian territory,87 both English

80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87

Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 143. Gomes, D. Fernando, pp. 191–93. Gomes, Court Society, p. 320. Froissart, Chronicle, p. 678. Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 89–90. Clifford Rogers, “By Fire and Sword: Bellum Hostile and ‘Civilians’ in the Hundred Years War,” in Civilians in the Path of War, ed. Mark Grimsley and Clifford Rogers (Lincoln, NE, 2008), p. 57. Russell, English Intervention, p. 320. Lopez, English in Portugal, p. 83. Froissart, Chronicle, p. 678.

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and Portuguese captains had no trouble in disobeying his orders. The king’s prohibition against military activity seems strange and is perhaps a measure of Ferdinand’s inexperience with military affairs. Keeping men under arms for extended periods was a tricky affair in the latter half of the fourteenth century. The Black Prince had maintained a significant force in Bordeaux throughout the winter of 1355/56, but only with pay at numerous – if irregular – intervals.88 But, even with this level of pay, the English forces began raiding across the French frontier in November 1355, and raiding continued throughout the winter.89 Especially in times of general inactivity, soldiers fell to acting as Free Companies and went into business for themselves until a more promising campaign came along.90 While Lopes claimed that the Portuguese peasantry caused a significant amount of casualties to the Anglo-Gascon soldiers who acted as Free Companies, such a claim is difficult to substantiate.91 Lopes himself claims that the 2,500 English soldiers at Badajoz in August 1382 could have defeated the entire Castilian army by themselves,92 and it was unusual for ill-armed and untrained peasants to fight trained soldiers. Peasants usually grabbed their valuable possessions and fled to a walled town or castle where they might find safety.93 Part of the reason why the Anglo-Gascon expeditionary force turned to raiding resulted from a lack of pay. Supposedly, Arnaud de Preissac, the Sultan of Trau, complained to Edmund of Langley in March 1382 that the men had received no pay for six months.94 Another part of the reason for the AngloGascons to ignore the king’s command was voiced by Thierry “the Canon” Robessart, who came to Iberia to undertake feats of arms. He refused to sit idly by and in the early months of 1382 gathered a force of 400 men-at-arms and 800 archers, over 46% of the entire Anglo-Gascon force, and pillaged his way to the castle of Fighiere, about twenty miles away from his base. He stormed the castle and, though wounded, took the place under terms with all of its provisions and booty.95 In April, the canon, apparently recovered from his earlier injuries, approached the earl of Cambridge, seeking permission to launch another raid. Edmund told Robessart that he needed to wait on orders from John of Gaunt and that he had come to Portugal “merely to reconnoitre the country.”96 But, the earl continued, he could not prevent Robessart and his colleagues from undertaking another expedition, although the king would be angry.

88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96

Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 83–85. Hewitt, Black Prince’s Expedition, pp. 81–84. Rogers, “By Fire and Sword,” pp. 58–59. Phillipe Contamine, “Les compagnies d’aventure en France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 87 (1975), pp. 371–73. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 151. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 148. Rogers, “Fire and Sword,” p. 46. Froissart, Chronicle, pp. 686–87. Froissart, Chronicle, pp. 679–80. Froissart, Chronicle, p. 686.

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Accordingly, Robessart marched south from his base at Barrancos with 400 men-at-arms and 400 archers and scoured the country to the south, taking the castles of Ban and la Courtisse before storming the town of Jaffre, about forty miles from Seville. At Jaffre the canon sacked and pillaged a rich monastery and gathered significant amounts of booty.97 The last of the raids that we know of took place in the spring of 1382 and was the largest of the three. On this occasion Thierry Robessart, along the grand master, John of Aviz, led a large army from Arronches toward the town of Ouguela, about twenty miles distant. Lopes claims that John of Aviz brought 200 cavalry and 4,000 infantry and that the total force consisted of 800 cavalry, 500 archers and 6,000 foot soldiers; a total of 7,300 men.98 This substantial force stormed the walls of Ouguela, ransacked the place, and took everything of value. Historians have interpreted these raids as part of a rebellion against Edmund of Langley’s weak leadership, resulting from the fact that Ferdinand I had no money to pay the English. But, not only did Ferdinand maintain a significant army in 1381–82, he also had more than enough money to pay the Anglo-Gascon force – which, it seems, he eventually did. There seems little doubt that Ferdinand assembled an army of some size in the autumn of 1381 in response to John I’s invasion, and that some of that force moved with him from Lisbon to Santarem that December. There is no indication that the king’s army was sent home until after the “battle of Badajoz” in August 1382 – a period of ten or eleven months. When the king and the army moved to Evora in mid 1382, Ferdinand ordered “war-machines, carts, bombards and other provisions to be prepared.”99 All of these items were expensive to build and/or maintain, as were troops under arms. Edmund of Langley’s army of just under 3,000 men drew £7,000 for one-quarter of a year. As Gomes suggests, raising an army through feudal dues was a thing of the past by 1380, and troops were raised by indenture, which was an expensive affair.100 Lopes’ claim that Ferdinand had 6,000 men-at-arms alone at Badajoz in August 1382 seems difficult to accept. If all of these men had been under arms since December 1381 the cost to the Portuguese treasury for nine months’ wages would have been roughly £81,000. Even if one accepts Ayala’s figure of 3,000 men-at-arms and 3,000 archers at Badajoz,101 the amount of money to keep this force for nine months comes in at over £50,000. No matter which figures one wishes to accept, the king was responsible for paying significant amounts of money out of the treasury to keep an army in the field. Lopes claimed that Ferdinand called a Cortes to ask for money for the English and their mounts, which could have generated taxation for other military purposes.102 But it is clear that no meeting of the Cortes took place between the

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Froissart, Chronicle, pp. 686–88. Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 128–29. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 83. Gomes, Court Society, p. 224. Ayala, Cronicas, 2:77. Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 68–69.

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Cortes of Torras Novas in August 1380 and Ferdinand I’s death in 1383.103 In late 1381 the king’s tax collectors imposed themselves into the collection of municipal taxes “without notice, let alone consent.”104 By March 1382 the king ordered a new subsidy, the pedido (Portuguese for “request”) by royal command. When this tax was combined with the extension of the existing sisa, or sales tax, on wine sales and everything sold in Portugal in 1382, the king realized over 400,000 libras of income.105 This was a significant amount of money, especially because Ferdinand had a habit of debasing his currency to put more money into circulation.106 Thus, it seems that King Ferdinand had enough money to successfully prosecute a prolonged war and pay the English. In the end several factors derailed the campaign and led Ferdinand to sue for peace. Judging from the provisions of the peace treaty it seems possible that Ferdinand I, who had precious little in the way of military success behind him, did not believe that his army, even supplemented by about 2,500 AngloGascons, could defeat Castile on its own, especially considering that the majority of his galley fleet, some of his friends, and some of his wife’s relatives, were in the hands of the Castilians. It was also clear that the great protagonist in all of this “Chemyn de Portyngale,” John of Gaunt, was nowhere near to fulfilling his promise from 1380 to assemble an army in Bordeaux and sweep into Castile from the north. The court in London had received a number of letters over the preceding months from both Ferdinand and Edmund of Langley asking when Gaunt would arrive, and while the duke of Lancaster vainly tried to get a parliamentary subsidy to raise troops, none was forthcoming. Rather than assemble forces on his own, John of Gaunt vacillated, awaiting another, hopefully more pliant, Parliament to secure a subsidy. But it seems that patience in the Portuguese court had worn thin. Ferdinand sent his chancellor, Lawrence Fogaca, to London to meet with Gaunt, but it seems to have become abundantly clear to Fogaca that the titular king of Castile had no real plans to move forward or even to gather an army. The Portuguese chancellor left London on 5 July,107 and probably arrived at Ferdinand’s court by the end of the month with news of Gaunt’s inactivity. Even though John of Gaunt, in letters to Peter III of Aragon on 26 August, stated that he would arrive in Castile from the Aquitaine with a powerful army by the spring of 1383,108 the duke’s moment had passed. In spite of the fact that Ferdinand had mobilized an army of some size and amassed a significant amount of cash to pay for it and (finally) the Anglo-Gascon contingent,

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Antonio Castro Henriques, “State Finance, War and Redistribution in Portugal, 1249–1527” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of York, 2008), pp. 210–12. Henriques, “State Finance,” p. 210. Antonio Castro Henriques, “The Rise of the Tax State in Portugal, 1371–1401,” e-Journal of Portuguese History 12 (2014), p. 59. Henriques, “State Finance,” pp. 185–87, 198–99. Edourad Perroy, Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, # 32, pp. 19–20. Rymer, Foedera, 4:149.

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to many in the Portuguese political community Gaunt’s claims probably seemed like empty promises.109 Thus, peace was the only viable option in the minds of both Ferdinand I and John I.110 The third part of this article will consider the issues of rebellion in the ranks of Edmund of Langley’s army and its effect on the overall outcome of the campaign. Lopes claimed that discipline problems within the Anglo-Gascon force were an issue within weeks of their landing in Lisbon, and roving bands of English soldiers ransacked homes, belittled and/or threatened members of the local population, and took what they wished. Lopes further stated that on each occasion of violence Edmund punished the transgressors, but that these punishments were not a deterrent to further acts of violence.111 While these events were no doubt disconcerting, what happened in Portugal in 1381 was not unlike many other post-1360 military expeditions, where discipline in the ranks, especially among the Free Companies, proved difficult to maintain. Even a commander traditionally seen as a strong leader by historians – Bertrand de Guesclin, “The Black Dog of Broceliande” – encountered no end of difficulty in controlling the Free Companies under his command during the Nájera campaign of 1367, and Robert Knolles faced similar difficulties with his men in Brittany in 1370. Even Henry of Bolingbroke could not control a small contingent of a bare 300 men when he went on crusade to Prussia in 1392.112 Froissart related that there was a threat of rebellion in Earl Edmund’s army over the non-payment of wages, though Lopes made no mention of a munity of any kind. But historians, following Russell,113 have claimed that a serious mutiny occurred in the Anglo-Gascon ranks in Portugal. Yet, there is little to substantiate these claims in the documentary evidence. Froissart’s story is that a group of ring-leaders, frustrated with a lack of pay, who would not listen to the entreaties of either Sir William Beauchamp or Sir Matthew Gournay,114 raised the standard of St. George and prepared to attack Portuguese towns on the frontier unless Ferdinand I paid them their back wages in full.115 Froissart named the

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While it may seem unusual for two belligerent powers to make peace so quickly, this was relatively common in the chaotic world of Iberian politics in the fourteenth century, see Don Kagay, “Shifting Alliances: The Unstable Bond Between Castile and Aragon in the late Fourteenth Century,” in The Emergence of Leon-Castile, c. 1065–1500, ed. James Todesca (London, 2015), pp. 121–40. Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 147–51; Gomes, D. Fernando, pp. 312–14. Lopes, English in Portugal, p. 77. As Cliff Rogers suggests, the scale and duration of the campaigns in the Hundred Years War “grew beyond the ability of the fledgling royal states that waged [them] to control fully.” Rogers “Fire and Sword,” p. 63. Douglas Biggs, Three Armies in Britain (Leiden, 2006), pp. 10–11. Russell clearly took what appear to be unrelated incidents and conflated them into “a rebellion,” Russell, English Intervention, p. 331. Two of John of Gaunt’s trusted retainers as well as the marshal and constable of the army, respectively. Froissart, Chronicle, pp. 688–89.

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ring-leaders as Sir John Sounder, who claimed to be a natural son of the Black Prince, and William Helmon, along with the German knight, Sir Thomas Simon, and the Gascon, the Lord of Chateauneuf, supporting the cause of the “rioters.” In the end, the Canon Robessart and Earl Edmund calmed the “rioters,” and Edmund’s subsequent visit to King Ferdinand produced his soldiers’ pay in full. Whether or not the events in question transpired as Froissart related them, they are perhaps more interesting than significant. What may be said with some certainty is that none of the men Froissart identifies as ring-leaders can be found in any documentary evidence as being a member of an English military expedition from 1370 to 1400. This, coupled with the fact that Froissart variously identified the natural son of the Black Prince by the names John Fondree and John Soultier as well as John Sounder, and that he identified William Helmon as William Hemon and William Hermon, makes one wonder if they were not fictitious individuals.116 There are, however, entries on the Patent Rolls of quite real named individuals who supposedly “behaved so rebelliously that [Edmund of Langley] could not accomplish the object of the expedition.” Letters patent ordering the arrest of the perpetrators were ordered on three separate occasions between 1381 and 1383.117 The letters ordered the arrest of only seventeen men. As a group they were both few in number as well as remarkably undistinguished in terms of military experience and social status. In fact, they seem to have been difficult to find, considering that letters patent ordering their arrest were being sealed as late as 24 June 1384, eighteen months or more after they arrived home.118 Judging from their surnames, the majority of these “rebels” came from Cornwall or Wales. Only three men of this group can be found to have had any military experience prior to 1381, and none can be considered significant. Sir Henry Ilcombe, named as a mutineer with his two brothers Baldwin and William, had served in William Montague, earl of Salisbury’s retinue on the failed La Rochelle expedition of 1372.119 Stephen Cardon, an esquire from Haverford, had served as a member of a standing garrison in Wales in 1377,120 and Thomas Northbury had received pay as a man-at-arms with Thomas of Woodstock, earl of Buckingham, both at sea and in Gascony in 1378.121 Of the seventeen men named only three received payment for their involvement on military campaigns after 1383. Stephen Cardon, esquire, served in the

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Froissart, Chronicle, p. 689. CPR, 1381–85, 24 November 1383, p. 256; 3 July 1384, pp. 348–49; 24 June 1384, p. 494. The seventeen named individuals were: Sir Henry Ilcombe, Richard Cressy, John Bolton, Stephan Cardon (esquire), John Farwey, John Dunmowe (archer), William Felton, John Fawy, William Ilcombe, Baldwin Ilcombe, Robert Neel (esquire), Richard Glyne, William Wyther, William Peutrie, John Lyile, Thomas Northbury, and John Lancelagon. CPR, 1381–1385, p. 494. TNA E 101/32/30 m. 6. TNA E 101/34/29 m. 11. TNA E 101/37/29 m. 1; E 101/42/13 m. 2.

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garrison at Calais in 1386 and on the earl of Arundel’s naval expedition the following year,122 while Robert Neel served with Arundel at sea in 1387,123 and John Dunmowe, an archer, along with Robert Neal served at sea with Arundel in 1388.124 These men’s subsequent careers do not appear to have been harmed by their involvement in whatever mutinous activities they undertook in Portugal. Sir Henry Ilcombe was no stranger to illegal behaviour and petitioned the chancellor in 1385 because he was falsely accused of rape,125 and he and his brothers sought and received a royal pardon at the request of Isabella of Castile, countess of Cambridge and Edmund of Langley’s wife, for all crimes.126 Yet, the same Henry Ilcombe rose to be coroner for Cornwall in 1394/95, and then escheator for the county from 1395 to 1399. He went on to serve as an MP for Cornwall in 1388 and 1395, and then for Lostwithiel in 1402 and 1407.127 It is impossible to discern exactly what “mutinous activities” these men undertook. Perhaps they were some of those who Lopes claimed broke into Lisbon houses in the autumn of 1381; they may have been scapegoats, but it is difficult to accept the claim that seventeen men of such remarkable insignificance could have organized and led a mutiny that derailed the entire campaign. Thus, it is difficult to substantiate that a major mutiny took place against Edmund of Langley in Portugal, and that the earl “sought to explain his failure by blaming everything on the mutinies.”128 What in the end can we take from this brief survey? The political situation in Iberia was highly volatile in 1381/82, full of competing ambitions among kings, princes, nobles, clergy, gentry, and civic corporations alike. The treaty that John of Gaunt and Ferdinand I concluded in 1380 may have represented the duke of Lancaster’s best chance to make good his claim to the Castilian throne, but it was flawed from the outset. Historians have interpreted a clause in John of Gaunt’s will offering to pay for any of his brother’s debts save for those incurred by Edmund in Portugal to mean that Gaunt never forgave Edmund of Langley for not succeeding where his elder brother thought he should.129 But it may be that that clause in the will says more about Gaunt than about Langley. Perhaps it was easier for John of Gaunt to blame his brother for what had happened in Iberia than to face the fact that Andeyro, who was playing his own hand, had

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TNA E 101/40/25 m. 1; E 101/40/33 m. 14. TNA E 101/40/34 m. 21. TNA E 101/41/5 m. 13d. TNA SC 8/118/5858. CPR, 1381–1385, p. 534. It is not known if the family sought pardon for activities surrounding crimes in England or for crimes against Edmund of Langley in Portugal, The House of Commons, ed. J. S. Roskell, Linda Clarke and Carole Rawcliffe, 4 vols. (Stroud, 1992), 3:472–74. House of Commons, 3:472–74, see also http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/ 1386–1421/member/ilcombe-sir-henry [accessed 22 July 2015]. Russell, English Intervention, p. 343. Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt, p. 421.

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duped the duke of Lancaster into believing in a Chimera – something that was not there. Nevertheless, Edmund of Langley’s fifteen months in Iberia were not the complete disaster that some have claimed. He navigated a very delicate political world fraught with deep divisions that produced some reasonable successes and left a military legacy that long outlasted the earl’s time in Portugal. In the end, however, no amount of English pressure, graduated or otherwise, would move Ferdinand to suffer a longer and more expensive war, or John I of Castile to trust his crown to a decision on the battlefield. What Edmund of Langley’s campaign in Portugal lacked was John of Gaunt to come to his aid. The brothers’ entire strategy depended on both of them being engaged and active. Unlike his younger brother, who committed a significant amount of his own wealth to the campaign, when push came to shove, John of Gaunt clearly refused to employ his own substantial resources to fund an expedition, and without Gaunt sweeping south like a wolf from the fold out of the Bordealais, there were few substantive things that Edmund of Langley could achieve on his own. Was Edmund of Langley’s campaign therefore doomed from the outset? I do not want to seem a “Lancastrian determinist” here, but without John of Gaunt’s presence in Iberia, Edmund of Langley was left to chase a Chimera, and one that was not even of his own making.

5 Note: A Medieval City under Threat Turns Its Coat, while Hedging Its Bets – Burgos Faces an Invasion in Spring 1366: Introduction and Translation L. J. Andrew Villalon

Introduction Despite the traditional image of the heavily armored knight on horseback, lance couched, charging recklessly into the fray, it has become a well-established truism of medieval military history that typical large-scale military activity in the period involved a siege rather than a set-piece battle. While battles did indeed occur, sieges conducted against castles, towns, and cities far surpassed them in number. If a target were strong and the defenders resolute, it might well hold out indefinitely, or at least long enough to witness the disintegration of the attacking army. On the other hand, there were not-a-few instances when the place under attack was not well fortified, not adequately supplied, or simply not strongly inclined to resist the forces brought against it. In such a case, its best hope lay in reaching some kind of negotiated accommodation with the attackers that would preserve the lives, liberty, and property of its inhabitants. Upon occasion, however, such a place might feel compelled to take pains to avoid having its surrender being seen as treason by its former lord, in order that it might avoid retribution at some future date in the event that that lord managed to regain possession. Such was the case with Burgos, the northern capital of the Iberian kingdom of Castile, when, in the spring of 1366, it was caught between two warring halfbrothers, one legitimate, the other illegitimate, both of whom were claiming the Castilian throne. Its actions on this occasion exemplify the careful path a city might have to tread in an effort to protect itself against present destruction as well as future retribution. In March of 1366, Enrique, count of Trastámara and illegitimate son of King Alfonso XI (r. 1311–50) invaded Castile accompanied by his principal captain, Bertrand du Guesclin (d. 1380), the legendary Breton warrior who would later become constable of France and drive the English out of much the territory they had conquered in the opening stages of the Hundred Years War (1339–1453). The pair led an army, paid for by France, Aragon, and the Papacy, composed of

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Castilian exiles, Aragonese volunteers, and thousands of men from the Free Companies, bodies of soldiery thrown out of work by a lull in the conflict raging north of the Pyrenees. The invasion’s purpose was to overthrow the reigning monarch of Castile, Pedro I, widely known as “the Cruel” (1350–66/1367–69). Despite Enrique’s illegitimacy, upon crossing into Castile he had proclaimed himself king of that land, from which he had been exiled a decade earlier. He was now encamped some eight leagues from Burgos. In that city, Enrique’s legitimate (and hated) half-brother, Pedro, was gathering forces to oppose the invasion. At the last minute, however, and without informing most of his supporters, Pedro decided to evacuate the city without a fight and head south to Seville. At this point, many who had supported him either dispersed or went over to the enemy. For their part, the people of Burgos faced a serious dilemma. Unable to defend themselves in the absence of the king and his army, they had little choice but to go over to Enrique or see their city sacked. However, if Pedro eventually won out and returned to Burgos (as he did, if only briefly, the following year), and the inhabitants had not in his view put up an adequate fight in their own defense, they might be open to accusations of treason. The Source The legal gyrations required of Burgos, or, for that matter, almost any city in a similar quandary, are well illustrated by a passage from the Crónica de Pedro I by Pedro López de Ayala. Born in 1332 to an old Basque family in northern Spain, Ayala was destined at first to enter the church; as a result, he was sent at a young age to Avignon, where he received a sound, if brief, education under the tutelage of his uncle, Cardinal Barroso. Following the cardinal’s death, he left the papal court and returned to Castile, where, early in the troubled reign of Pedro I (1350–66/1367–69), he entered the royal household as a page. For well over a decade, the house of Ayala, presided over by the chronicler’s father, Fernán Peréz, stoutly supported the increasingly unpopular monarch. During these years, the younger Ayala came of age, rising through the military hierarchy and eventually playing a significant role in the king’s war against neighboring Aragon, later dubbed the War of the Two Pedros (1356–66). Then, in the pivotal year of 1366, his family joined much of the aristocracy, including the closely allied Basque houses of Mendoza and Orozco, in transferring their allegiance to Pedro’s hated half-brother and rival for the throne, Enrique de Trastámara. During three years of civil war that followed (1366–69), Ayala helped his new master to overthrow his old one. He was captured at the battle of Nájera, a crushing defeat for Enrique, but upon securing his release, rejoined that king for the closing months of the struggle – one which ended in 1369 with Pedro’s dramatic death under the walls of Montiel, a scene Ayala would later portray at some length in his chronicle. Thereafter, for more than three decades Ayala continued to serve successive members of the new Trastámaran dynasty established by Enrique II, including the founder’s son, Juan I (1379–90), and later his grandson, Enrique III (1390–1407).

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During Juan’s reign, Ayala witnessed two more of the century’s major military encounters: in one case as an observer, in the other as a participant. While on a diplomatic mission to the Low Countries in 1382, he was present at the battle of Roosebecke in which a French army massacred the forces of the commune of Ghent. Three years later, Ayala, now aged over fifty, resumed his own military career when, along with much of the Castilian nobility, he participated in Juan I’s ill-starred invasion of Portugal. As a result, he found himself at the battle of Aljubarrota where the Portuguese routed the Castilian invaders, ending Juan’s attempt to absorb the neighboring kingdom and reaffirming Portuguese independence for several centuries to come. Once again, Ayala was taken on the field and spent many months as a prisoner of war. In 1398, Ayala capped his long political career with a brief stint as lord chancellor of Castile, after which he is thought to have retired into a Geronymite monastery near the Basque country where he had been born. Here, around 1407, Pedro López de Ayala died, having outlived most of his contemporaries, including that other great chronicler of the age, Jean Froissart, whose exit from the scene is believed to have occurred two years earlier. Despite busy decades of public service, in later life, Ayala found time to write chronicles for each of the four kings he had served, the last of which, the Crónica de Enrique III, remained unfinished at his death. The first of these chronicles, devoted to the reign of Pedro I, was his most ambitious and most controversial historical work. His largely unfavorable portrait of Pedro, coupled with his desertion of that monarch at a critical moment, has led not a few historians over the centuries to accuse him of bias and misrepresentation. Those adopting this view condemn the chronicle as either an exercise in self-justification or, worse, a piece of propaganda written to serve the usurper to whom he had transferred his allegiance (views with which the present author strongly disagrees.) The following translation is part of a joint project with co-editor/co-author Donald J. Kagay to translate one of the major chronicles of the late medieval period. In undertaking this translation, we have worked primarily from the most easily available version of the work, used by most Spanish historians of the past, the edition by Cayetano Rossell.1

1

Pedro López de Ayala, Crónica del Rey Don Pedro Primero, in Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla desde don Alfonso el Sabio, hasta los Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel [CRC], Cayetano Rosell (ed.), 3 vols., (Madrid, 1877). Volume 1 of the nineteenth-century edition containing Pedro’s chronicle, the version we have used for our translation, has been reprinted in the Biblioteca de autores españoles, vol. 66 (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1953), pp. 393–614. For the above below, see pp. 540–41. For those who wish to consult a more recent edition of Ayala’s chronicle, see: Pedro López de Ayala, Crónica del rey don Pedro, ed. Constance L. Wilkins and Heanon M. Wilkins (Madison, 1985). Alternatively, there is an even more recent edition dating to the 1990s published in Argentina. See: Pedro López de Ayala, Crónica del rey don Pedro y del rey don Enrique su hermano, hijos del rey don Alfonso onceno, ed. Germán Orduna and José Luis Moure, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1994–97).

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Translation Chapter IV: How the King Don Pedro left Burgos and abandoned the city and the companies that were there with him. While in Burgos, King Pedro learned that Count Enrique and the captains who had come with him had arrived at Calahorra and taken it and how Count Enrique was calling himself king of Castile and Leon, how he had divided up all the offices of the realm, how he had made and promised many gifts, and how he had seized Navarrete and Briviesca. [Pedro] greatly feared all this; and on Saturday morning, the day before Palm Sunday, without saying anything to the lords and knights who were with him, he rode out as if to leave and abandon the city of Burgos. And when the inhabitants of the city, great and small, learned of this they came to him at his palace and addressing him, required and begged him by his grace (por merced) not to leave and abandon them because he had there many good companies and enough [supplies] to maintain them. And if he had need of any more, they would give to him as much as they had in this world. They asked the scribes (escribanos) who were present that they provide [the inhabitants] with a signed record of the meeting. The king was at the gate of the palace where he was staying and already intended to mount up to leave there. He responded to [the people] that he greatly appreciated all the good advice they had given him and he was sure that they would do all they had promised, because he realized very well that the loyalty they felt [for him] was great and a good thing and of the sort they had also always shown to the kings from whom he was descended. But he must leave there immediately because he had certain news that Count Enrique and the companies that were with him intended to take the road to Seville, where he [Pedro] had his children and his treasure, and for this reason he was leaving to make them secure. And the people of Burgos came again to ask him that he not leave the city, and that they did not believe the news he had received, but instead it was certain the count and all the companies in Briviesca, eight leagues from there, intended to come to Burgos. And concerning this matter, the people of the city strongly importuned the king, but when they saw that he would not hear any more from them, they asked him this: “Lord, as your grace is aware, your enemies are eight leagues from here, but you do not wish to await them here in this, your very noble city of Burgos with the many good companies you have here. What do you command us to do and how should we defend ourselves?” The king then said to them: “I command that you do the best you are able to do.” And they replied to him: “Lord, we would wish to have such good fortune that we should be able to defend this, your city from all your enemies, but when you with so many men and such good companies do not dare to defend it, what do you want us to do? Therefore, Lord, if it be the case (may God not let it be so) that we are unable to defend it, will you excuse us from the oath and homage for this city that we swore to you one, two and three times (quitades nos el

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pleyto é omenage que por esta ciudad vos tenemos fecho una é dos é tres veces).” The king responded: “Yes.” And they asked the scribes who were there to give them signed copies of the instrument. Just before the king left there, a major representative (recabdador mayor) of the bishop of Burgos arrived who was named Rui Perez de Mena and who held the castle of Burgos. Since the maravedis collected from the king’s rents were guarded within the said castle, the representative asked the king that he instruct what was to be done with the castle inasmuch as he was leaving the city of Burgos and it could not be defended. And the king ordered him to defend it, to which Rui Perez replied: “Lord, I do not have the power to defend it since you are leaving your city of Burgos.” And the king did not respond to him. On the morning of the day the king left Burgos, he ordered the execution of Juan Ferrandez de Tovar, brother of Don Ferrand Sanchez de Tovar, who was imprisoned in the castle of the said city. He did this as a result of anger he felt toward his brother, Don Ferrand Sanchez, who had welcomed Count Enrique in the city of Calahorra. And the king departed Burgos on Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday, which was the twenty-eighth day of March of this said year.... Chapter VI: What the people of Burgos did after King Pedro left Thus it was in the city of Burgos when [the inhabitants] saw matters reach a point where the king was going to Seville without affording them any protection (sin les poner cabro alguno) and they realized they could not protect themselves. For all the companies that had gathered at the command of King Pedro had left there, some going over to Count Enrique, others departing for their lands. And therefore, the people of Burgos took counsel on what they should do since there was no way in the world they could defend themselves and if they dawdled for too long before reaching an agreement [with the invaders], they could be in great danger. For the city of Burgos was not well-fortified (cercada), but had a low wall, and all the armed companies of both foreigners and Castilians who came with Count Enrique were already close at hand, only eight leagues from Burgos in the town of Briviesca, which they had taken by force (as we have recounted). For these reasons, they sent messengers to [the count] in Briviesca addressing him as count,2 but informing him that as soon as he was in Burgos and swore to them that he would maintain their rights (fueros) and liberties they would call him king. And they asked him to show favor (por merced) by coming to Burgos for they would welcome him as their lord king and this they could well3 do without falling into error or incurring shame (sin caer en yerro é en verguenza) because they were freed from the oath and homage (tenia quito el pleito é

2 3

An alternate version reads as follows: “They sent him their messengers, calling him king and lord and asking him to show favor (por merced) by coming to his very noble city of Burgos.” A better translation here might be “lawfully.”

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omenage) they had sworn to King Pedro, and which he had rescinded when he left there. And Count Enrique was greatly pleased by the messengers of Burgos and with the letters that the city sent to him. He immediately departed Briviesca and came to Burgos where he was received very honorably with joy and large processions. And the alcaide who held the city castle (of whom we have spoken) came to him and surrendered it.

6 Medieval European Mercenaries in North Africa: The Value of Difference Michael Lower

President Obama does not demand a Muslim-only Secret Service, nor does President Rouhani of Iran insist upon an exclusively Christian bodyguard. During the medieval and early modern periods, however, Muslim and Christian rulers regularly hired mercenary guards of each other’s faith to defend their persons and strengthen their armies. In a time famous for its religious antagonism, these mercenary bands crossed a confessional divide, spread through the Mediterranean, and carved out a presence for themselves in their host societies, sometimes for centuries. While they often fought against members of different faiths, they sometimes took up arms against their co-religionists as well. Even so, they usually operated with the consent of their own religious and political authorities.1 Though employing foreign soldiers was commonplace throughout the medieval Mediterranean world, it was especially popular in North Africa. Here dynasties large and small, from the mighty Almoravid and Almohad Empires to the successor dynasties of the Hafsids in Tunisia, the ‘Abd al-Wadids in Algeria, and the Marinids in Morocco, hired European Christian fighters in impressive numbers. As they worked, raised families, and reproduced themselves over the centuries, these mercenaries came to occupy a key role in North African political and social life. They decided the course of battles, propped up and toppled dynasties, served as intermediaries in inter-religious diplomacy, and created a fascinating hybrid lifestyle that combined elements from their natal and adopted homelands. Although scholars have noted the importance of European mercenaries to western Mediterranean history, little attempt has been made to explain their enduring appeal to the North African regimes that employed them. What few contemporary analyses there are have tended to focus on a technical military argument that was first put forward by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century.2 1 2

Michael Lower, “Christian Mercenaries in Muslim Lands: Their Status in Medieval Islamic and Canon Law,” in The Crusader World, ed. Adrian J. Boas (London, 2015), pp. 419–33. Simon Barton, “Traitors to the Faith? Christian Mercenaries in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, c. 1100–1300,” in Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence. Studies in Honour of Angus MacKay, ed. Roger Collins (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 30–31; Alejandro García Sanjuán, “Mercenarios cristianos al servicio de los musulmanes en el norte de Africa durante el siglo XIII,” in La Península íbéríca entre el Medíterráneo Atlántíco; siglos XIII–XV, ed. Manuel González Jiménez and Isabel Montes Romero-Camacho (Cadiz, 2006), pp. 436–37.

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The great North African thinker suggested that local rulers valued heavily armed mounted European knights for their ability to hold the line on the battlefield. By setting a defensive screen in front of the ruler, the European knights enabled their more lightly armed and speedier local counterparts to launch the rapid attacks and feigned retreats that were the hallmarks of their style.3 What the European fighters offered, in other words, was diversification. They added a distinct but complementary element to a Maghribi ruler’s tactical array in combat. This explanation is compelling but partial because it does not account for the other functions these mercenaries performed away from the battlefield. Set-piece battles were as rare in North Africa as they were in the rest of the medieval Mediterranean. The many other jobs that these mercenaries did – serving as personal bodyguards to the ruler, collecting his taxes in the countryside, and negotiating with European powers on his behalf – were just as important as their combat operations and must be accounted for when explaining their popularity. Building on Ibn Khaldun’s notion of the positive value of diversification, I will suggest that the widespread use of European mercenaries in North Africa was due not just to differences in the way they fought, but to differences in who they were. Ultimately, it was their status as outsiders as much as their military qualities that made them attractive to Maghribi rulers. The Rise of the Mercenaries The initial appearance of European mercenaries in the Maghrib owed much to the growing involvement of North African regimes in Muslim Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In al-Andalus, there was a tradition of recruiting Christian fighters that went back to the Umayyad caliphs of Corboba. The third Umayyad caliph, al-Hakan I (r. 796–822), had founded a palace guard made up of Galicians and Narbonnais. They were known as the “silent ones” (al-khurs) because they did not speak Arabic. Al-Hakan I’s successor, ‘Abd al-Rahman II (r. 822–52), bolstered their numbers with Christian slaves and free volunteers compelled or attracted to his service from the Languedoc and Gascony.4 The collapse of the Umayyad caliphate in the eleventh century did nothing to halt the flow of European soldiers into al-Andalus. The local strongmen who ruled the ta’ifa principalities that came to dominate the region often found allies in their internecine struggles among ambitious Christian adventurers from the north. Rodrigo Diaz – El Cid – was only the most famous of a common type. At first, the arrival of the Almoravids in al-Andalus seemed likely to transform the

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‘Abd al-Rahman b. Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar wa-diwan al-mubtada’ wa-l-khabar fi ayyam al-‘arab wa-l-‘ajam wa-l-barbar wa-man ‘asarahum min dhawi al-sultan al-akbar, 7 vols. (Beirut, 1956–61), 1:479–86; translated as The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Princeton, 1967), 2:74–81. Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane, 3 vols. (Paris, 1950–67), 1:189–90, 260; François Clément, “Reverter et son fils, deux officiers catalans au service des sultans de Marrakech,” Medieval Encounters 9 (2003), p. 80.

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situation. This confederation of Sanhaja Berber tribes from southern Morocco had ostensibly crossed the Straits to impose a new moral order on Muslim Spain. Almoravid intervention would put a stop to practices that, in their eyes at least, undermined the legitimacy of the ta’ifa kings. These included resorting to Christian military assistance, paying tribute to Christian rulers, and financing it all through non-Qur’anic taxes on Muslims. Soon enough, though, the Almoravids were forced to adopt a more flexible stance toward the constellation of issues that were so important to their early expansionist ideology. The impetus came from the Almohads, a new North African power that was threatening to eclipse the Almoravids by the early 1130s. To defend his regime against the newcomers, the Almoravid emir ‘Ali b. Yusuf b. Tashfin began to deport Christian captives from his Iberian campaigns back to Marrakesh, where he formed them into combat units to defend the heartland of the empire. These seem to have been the first major contingents of European fighters to serve in North Africa.5 These conscripts were soon working alongside volunteers who saw opportunities for self-advancement in the Almoravid crisis. The most successful of these free fighters was Reverter, viscount of Barcelona and lord of La Guardia de Montserrat. By the early 1140s he was leading Almoravid campaigns against the Almohads, sometimes fighting alongside ‘Ali b. Yusuf b. Tashfin and at other times, remarkably, taking sole command of Muslim troops. His death in 1144, perhaps by crucifixion, hastened the collapse of the Almoravid dynasty and cleared the way for the Almohads to take power in Marrakesh.6 The Almohads followed the same path as their predecessors when it came to European mercenaries, with initial rejection eventually making way for enthusiastic adoption. The turning point was defeat by a coalition of Iberian Christian monarchies at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. The result stimulated both supply and demand in the mercenary market. Since the Almohads and the Castilians agreed to a truce shortly afterwards, many Castilian soldiers looked to North Africa for opportunities to continue their military careers. Conditions in the Maghrib, meanwhile, encouraged these economic migrants, because the defeat at Las Navas unleashed forces of local autonomy across the Almohad Empire. By the mid-thirteenth century, three main successor dynasties had emerged: the Hafsids in Tunis, the ‘Abd al-Wadids in Tlemcen, and the Marinids in Fez. Each dynasty hired mercenaries from overseas to help establish itself in the transformed political landscape. At the same time, as the legitimacy of the Almohad caliphate

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Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, ed. Antonio Maya Sánchez, in Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, Pars I, ed. Emma Falque, Juan Gil, and Antonio Maya Sánchez, CCCM 71 (Turnhout, 1990), p. 200. For Reverter’s career, see István Frank, “Reverter, vicomte de Barcelone (vers 1130–1145),” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 26 (1954–56), 195–204; Barton, “Traitors to the Faith?,” p. 40 n. 28; and Clément, “Reverter et son fils,” pp. 79–106.

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was increasingly called into question, it turned to the same military market in a bid to maintain the status quo.7 The struggle for survival that ensued was multilateral and protracted. Each of the new dynasties, and the old Almohad regime as well, harbored centralizing aspirations. These aspirations, in turn, were contested on two fronts: externally, as each power tried to curb the ambitions of its rivals; and internally, as each encountered opposition from entrenched local interests. These local interests varied from place to place but often included Arab Bedouin tribes, urban elites, Andalusi refugees from the reconquista, and members of the old Almohad aristocracy who had been excluded from the new dispensation.8 These groups combined and recombined in ever-shifting coalitions that the new dynasts attempted to co-opt or contain with varying degrees of success. Faced with the questionable loyalties, and sometimes the overt hostility, of these constituencies, the centralizers sought out military force that was not enmeshed in local networks of power. As the ultimate social and religious outsiders, with a distinct set of military attributes, European mercenaries were perfectly suited to this role. Ibn Khaldun’s Tactical Analysis “The war of the Moors is not like that of the Christians : : : . In every way, the one style differs from the other.” So said Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348), the nephew of King Alfonso X of Castile, echoing the observations of Ibn Khaldun.9 This difference in fighting style was noted and appreciated on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the main recruiting grounds for the European mercenaries who fought in North Africa – the Crown of Aragon, Castile, and the kingdom of Sicily – the heavily armored cavalryman maintained his prominence. He wore heavy mail armor, carried a large shield, and was wedged onto his horse by a saddle with a large pommel and stirrups positioned to keep his legs outstretched, bracing him for the heavy blows delivered and received with a long lance. This style of riding, known as a la brida in Iberian sources, was well suited for what Ibn Khaldun called “fighting in close formation” or “the advance in rows or lines” (al-zahf sufufan). By contrast, Arab and Berber mounted troops were mainly light cavalry. They fought with shorter lances, which could be thrown, and sometimes

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Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, “Les relations du Maroc et de la Castille pendant la première moitié du XIIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire et de civilization du Maghreb 5 (1968), pp. 37–40; Barton, “Traitors to the Faith?,” p. 24; Michael Lower, “The Papacy and Christian Mercenaries of Thirteenth-Century North Africa,” Speculum 89 (2014), pp. 607–08. For North African political history in this period, see now Ramzi Rouighi, The Making of a Mediterranean Emirate: Ifriqiya and Its Andalusis, 1200–1400 (Philadelphia, 2011). Don Juan Manuel, Libro de los estados, ed. Ian Macpherson and Robert Tate (Oxford, 1974), p. 144; for an excellent discussion of these differences in combat techniques, which also cites this quotation, see Hussein Anwar Fancy, Mercenary Logic: Muslim Soldiers in the Service of the Crown of Aragon (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2008), pp. 44–46, 131–32.

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with crossbows. They sat on saddles with shorter stirrups and lower pommels, called raiding saddles. Their highly maneuverable riding style was known as a la jineta in Iberia. It allowed them to advance and withdraw at high speed, a technique Ibn Khaldun referred to as “al-karr wa-l-farr.”10 In an extended discussion of battlefield tactics in his Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun explained that fighting in close formation and the technique of advance and withdrawal had been the two main combat styles since “the beginning of men’s existence.” While the Arabs and Berbers of the Maghrib specialized in al-karr wa-l-farr, all non-Arabs preferred fighting in close formation. So did Ibn Khaldun, and he praised its advantages at length: Fighting in closed formation is more steady and fierce than fighting with the technique of attack and withdrawal. That is because in fighting in closed formation, the lines are orderly and evenly arranged, like arrows or like rows of worshippers at prayers. People advance in closed lines against the enemy. This makes for greater steadiness in assault and for better use of the proper tactics. It frightens the enemy more. A closed formation is like a long wall or a well-built castle which no one could hope to move.11

Battle lines helped to preserve order and those who fell back during an attack could induce panic in the ranks and provoke a rout. According to Ibn Khaldun, close formation fighting was key to the success of the Arab armies who waged the wars of early Islamic expansion. Even though the technique did not come naturally to them, they used it because their enemies did and because it suited their intense commitment to holy war. Over time, though, the practice fell out of use, especially in the Maghrib. Ibn Khaldun associated the shift away from close formation fighting with his model for understanding the rise and decline of dynasties in terms of group solidarity. Back in the day, the founders of the great dynasties had lived in tents and kept their camels, wives, and children with them in camp. They fought in the inferior al-karr wa-l-farr style, but it worked well, for two reasons: first, the close proximity of their families encouraged them not to flee the field; second, they used their camels as a kind of defensive screen to guard the camp. Once they achieved their royal ambitions and took up a sedentary life in the city, however, they got used to going on campaign without their families or even their camels. When they went out to battle they would set up their baggage and pack animals just outside the camp, but these proved no substitute for the line of camels or the knowledge that they were fighting in front of their loved ones. Warriors who had once stood their ground became frightened by the turmoil of battle and prone to flight. Here is where the European mercenaries came in. Since Maghribi soldiers could no longer fight in close formation, their rulers had to import European Christians who had expertise in that style. Replacing the pack animals that had proved ineffective in the role, these European troops would hold the line behind

10 11

Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar, 1:480 (Muqaddimah, 2:74); Fancy, Mercenary Logic, pp. 44–46. Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar, 1:480 (Muqaddimah, 2:74–75).

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the local light cavalry and prevent them from fleeing the battlefield and exposing the ruler to capture or death. In the eyes of these rulers, the obvious tactical need for these holding troops justified the recourse to infidel aid, a practice that prevailing legal norms in the region might otherwise have frowned upon.12 Compelling on its own terms, Ibn Khaldun’s explanation for the prevalence of European soldiers in North African armies also jives well with what we know about the composition of such forces from other sources. There was a tendency toward diversification from the twelfth century onward. The Almohads, for example, quickly expanded beyond the original Masmuda Berber elements of their military confederation. They were adept at incorporating troops from the ranks of defeated rivals. They took the Almoravids’ elite Sudanese guard into their service after defeating them; brought the Arab Bedouin Banu Hilal into the fold after conquering Ifriqiya; and found a place for the Ghuzz after these mounted Turkish archers had supported an unsuccessful insurgency against them in the eastern Maghrib. European mercenaries who came to fight in North Africa were usually joining armed forces already marked by a high degree of ethnic and technical diversity.13 This broader context of military diversification lends plausibility to Ibn Khaldun’s suggestion that North African rulers recruited European mercenaries to play a specific role on the battlefield. The challenge from the modern historian’s point of view, though, is to verify that they actually fought in the way Ibn Khaldun describes. There are very few, if any, detailed tactical descriptions of medieval European mercenaries in battle in North African narrative sources. We know that they fought in large-scale combat operations, that they suffered defeats and won victories, and that they led charges and even killed rival rulers. I have found no source, however, that describes them maintaining a mounted defensive line as light cavalry attacked and retreated in front of them. This lack of evidence does not invalidate Ibn Khaldun’s theory, but it does suggest that further research into how the mercenaries operated in North Africa could help to flesh it out. While contemporary sources do not have much to say about mercenary combat tactics, they do offer information about a wide range of roles they performed for the dynasties that hired them. Personal Military Service: The Dependency–Loyalty Dynamic Regardless of the particular tactics they employed, the core function of the medieval European mercenary in North Africa was to provide his employer with military force that was loyal and free of local entanglements. These two desirable

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Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar, 1:480–86 (Muqaddimah, 2:74–81). J. F. P. Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government in Barbary until the Sixth Century of the Hijra (London, 1958), pp. 74–83; Abdellatif Sabbane, Le gouvernement et l’administration de la dynastie Almohade (XIIe–XIIIe siècles) (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 1999), pp. 348–89; Jean-Pierre Molénat, “L’organisation militaire des Almohades,” in Los Almohades: problemas y perspectivas, ed. Patrice Cressier, Maribel Fierro, and Luis Molina (Madrid, 2005), 2:547–65.

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qualities – outsider status and dependency – were linked. As Europeans who did not belong to a North African tribe and as Christians who did not adhere to the region’s majority faith, the mercenaries were doubly foreign to the medieval Maghrib.14 Lacking ties to local social and religious networks, they were reliant on the ruler for their wages and very survival. If they failed in their work, they could be disposed of with few repercussions. The local interest groups whose power they had been brought in to counteract – Andalusis, Arab Bedouin tribes, Almohad shayks – were not going to save them if they fell out of favor with their employer. Conversely, if they succeeded and grew powerful – as many did – the religious difference ensured that however influential they might become they could not actually supplant the ruler and take power into their own hands. Although we now recognize that religious identities were more fluid in the medieval Mediterranean than we once thought, it remains the case that a Christian mercenary captain simply could not become – and none in fact ever did – the next emir of Tunis, Tlemcen, or Fez. He could be the power behind the throne, but never the power on it. In an environment where sovereigns with centralizing aspirations were constantly battling against forces of local autonomy, this was a reassuring quality to possess. Two examples can serve to show the dependency–loyalty dynamic at work in the relationship between medieval European mercenaries and North African rulers. The first involves the later Almohad caliphs, who turned to foreign fighters in their bid to maintain power in the face of a Marinid insurgency around Fez, internecine struggles among the leading families of the dynasty, and rebellions against their rule in al-Andalus. The key figure in this transition was Abu al-‘Ula al-Ma’mun (r. 1227–32). Proclaimed caliph in Seville in the autumn of 1227, he found his claims challenged in Morocco by a nephew, Yahya b. al-Nasr, who gained the support of the Almohad shayks who composed the empire’s traditional ruling elite. With enthusiasm for his plans equally limited among potential backers in al-Andalus, al-Ma’mun sought military aid from King Fernando III of Castile. In exchange for several fortresses on the Castilian frontier, King Fernando provided al-Ma’mun with five hundred cavalry to take to Morocco.15 They proved their worth almost immediately: in a battle just outside Marrakesh, the Castilian troops charged down and destroyed the red tent that marked out Yahya b. al-Nasr’s headquarters, provoking panic and flight among his followers. Shortly after this victory, which won him the caliphate, al-Ma’mun installed his mercenaries in Marrakesh and built them a Christian church dedicated to Mary. Signaling a broader political reorientation, he then rounded up the most influential Almohad tribal leaders and had them executed, while issuing an edict that repudiated Ibn Tumart, the Almohad founder, and 14 15

Clément, “Reverter et son fils,” p. 85. Ibn ‘Idhari al-Marrakushi, Al-Bayan al-mughrib fi akhbar al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib: Qism al-Muwahhidin, ed. Muhammad Ibrahim al-Katani et al. (Beirut, 1985), p. 284; translated as Al-Bayan al-mughrib fi ijtisar ajbar muluk al-Andalus wa al-Maghrib: Los Almohades, trans. Ambrosio Huici Miranda, 2 vols. (Tetuán, 1953–54), 1:313.

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ordered his name removed from the Friday prayers. Lacking support among the traditional constituencies that had served the dynasty for generations, al-Ma’mun built his regime on an improbable new foundation: European mercenaries and alliances with Castile and the papacy, the powers that ensured their continual replenishment.16 Al-Ma’mun’s death in October 1232 revealed just how close the ties between the Castilian soldiers and the Almohad regime had become. The caliph had passed away while marching back to Marrakesh after suppressing a rebellion in Ceuta. Yahya b. al-Nasr had taken advantage of his absence from the capital to sack it and burn down the church of St. Mary – a clear strike against the caliph’s European soldiers. Al-Ma’mun’s wife, a Christian and former captive named Habab, wanted her fourteen-year-old son to succeed to the caliphate, but she was concerned that effecting the transition far from home, at the tail end of a difficult campaign, might be challenging. With Yahya b. al-Nasr ensconced in Marrakesh, the temptation among al-Ma’mun’s followers to abandon the caliph would be strong if they learned he were dead. So she met secretly with the caid (commander) of the Christian guard and they agreed to keep al-Ma’mun’s death a secret until they could return to Marrakesh. They spread the word that the caliph was ill and could not ride, and placed his corpse in a covered and closely guarded litter. With the rank and file apparently none the wiser, they trundled the body back to the gates of the city, defeated Yahya b. al-Nasir and his followers, re-installed themselves in the Almohad palace complex, and then, finally, proclaimed Abu Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahid al-Rashid as the new caliph.17 Al-Rashid would continue his father’s practice of relying on European mercenaries, accepting more reinforcements from Castile in 1233 and leading them on a sweep southwards in 1235 that culminated in the re-conquest of Sijilmassa.18 Once the city was retaken, he recruited the defeated emir’s own troop of European mercenaries into the Almohad army and brought his now even larger force of foreign soldiers back to Marrakesh. Following al-Rashid’s death in a boating accident in 1242, his half-brother al-Sa‘id succeeded him. The new caliph maintained close bonds with his European cavalry and deployed them successfully against the gravest threat to the dynasty: the Marinids of Fez. In a battle fought between the Almohads and the Marinids on 12 November 1244, the mercenary captain Juan Gaïtan killed the Marinid emir Abu Mu‘arif Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Haq.19 Victories such as these became rarer in the decades to come, even as European soldiers continued to serve the Almohads. Despite suffering a string of defeats, the relationship between the caliphs and their Christian troops remained strong. In June 1248, al-Sa‘id lost his own life and that of his young son and heir in the 16 17 18 19

Lower, “Papacy and Mercenaries,” pp. 609–12. Ibn ‘Idhari, Al-Bayan al-mughrib, pp. 298–301(trans. Huici Miranda, 1:338–39). Ibid., pp. 324–25 (trans. Huici Miranda, 2:67–69). Ibn Abi Zar‘, Al-Dhakhira al-saniyya fi tarikh al-dawla al-mariniyya, ed. ‘Abd al-Wahab b. Mansur (Rabat, 1972), pp. 62–63.

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course of a calamitous battle against the ‘Abd al-Wadids of Tlemcen.20 The victorious ‘Abd al-Wadid emir, Yaghmurasan b. Zayyan, took many captives, including a sizable number of Christian mercenaries. Yaghmurasan incorporated the European soldiers into his army and made some of them into an elite palace guard. In this capacity, they served as a personal bodyguard and publicly displayed the new monarch’s sovereign might in military processions. Behind the scenes, though, all was not as it seemed. In 1254, the caid of the European guard staged an uprising against Yaghmurasan, which cost the emir the life of his son and nearly took his own as well. Yaghmurasan had to call on indigenous troops and the residents of Tlemcen to destroy the guard he had worked so hard to cultivate. Ibn Khaldun, our source for this story, tells it as a tale of infidel treachery.21 From the ‘Abd al-Wadid point of view, this was certainly how it must have appeared. But the story can also be read as a demonstration of loyalty to a previous employer. Around the same time that Yaghmurasan was struggling to integrate Almohad Christian mercenaries into his military retinue in Tlemcen, the Marinid emir Abu Yahya b. ‘Abd al-Haq was encountering similar problems in Fez. After taking Fez from the Almohads, Abu Yahya appointed a governor and assigned him a detachment of former Almohad Christian soldiers as a personal bodyguard. Instead of helping him to establish Marinid control over the city, they conspired with some leading Almohad shayks in an attempt to restore the old regime. One day as the governor was holding court in his audience chamber, the caid of the Christian guard stalked in with several of his fellow soldiers, addressed some insulting words to the governor, and killed him in the scuffle that ensued. The caid took command of the city and dispatched an oath of fidelity to al-Murtada, who had succeeded al-Sa‘id as Almohad caliph in 1248. The Marinids regained control of Fez only after a nine-month siege. While the motivations behind the uprising of the former Almohad mercenaries in Tlemcen remain murky, in Fez they were clearly striking a blow for their old masters.22 The difficulties that the ‘Abd al-Wadids and the Marinids encountered when they tried to integrate Almohad Christian mercenary guards into their own armed forces proved short lived. By the 1270s, both dynasties were employing troops recruited independently from Iberia and southern Italy. So too were the Hafsids, who had carved out an autonomous emirate around Tunis by the 1230s. It was not just North African dynasties in decline that found European mercenaries an attractive proposition. In modern and medieval discussions, their service is often

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‘Ali b. ‘Abd-Allah b. Abi Zar‘, Al-Anis al-mutrib bi-rawd al-qirtas fi akhbar muluk al-maghrib wa-tarikh madinat Fas, ed. ‘Abd al-Wahad b. Mansur (Rabat, 1999), p. 338; French translation: Roudh el-Kartas: Histoire des souverains du Maghreb et annals de la ville de Fès, trans. Auguste Beaumier (Paris, 1860), p. 370. Spanish translation: Rawd al-Qirtas, trans. Ambrosio Huici Miranda, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1964), 2:499–500. Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar, 7:174–75; translated as Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique septentrionale, ed. and trans. William MacGuckin de Slane, 4 vols. (Algiers, 1852–56), 3:353. Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar, 7:359–60 (Histoire des Berbères,4:40–41).

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linked with political chaos and wider social breakdowns. In Ibn Khaldun’s cyclical model of the rise and fall of dynasties, the Almoravid and Almohad turn to external sources of military aid signaled the erosion of the group solidarity that undergirded their original rise to power. Following along from this, we might expect that the successors to the Almohads would have shunned European mercenaries and looked inward for the social cohesion that could fuel military expansion. This was not the case, however. As the Hafsid example shows, European mercenaries could feature at the beginning and end of the Khaldunian cycle of dynastic growth and decline. The Hafsids employed European mercenaries for the same reasons the Almohads had: the soldiers offered unaligned and biddable military force. Rather than consolidating around a tribal core, the Hafsids looked to diversify potential sources of support for their fledgling dynasty in the decades after its establishment by Abu Zakariya Yahya (r. 1229–49). To counter entrenched local interests (in this case the Almohad shayks whose families had once ruled over Ifriqiya), his son and successor Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Mustansir (r. 1249–77) reached out to a number of outsider groups: highly literate Andalusi émigrés who could serve in his administration, freed slaves from overseas (‘uluj) who could fight in his army, and, most foreign of all, European mercenaries who could provide personal protection.23 In 1257, a Catalan aristocrat named Guillem Moncada brought seventy knights to Tunis from the Crown of Aragon, with the permission of his king, Jaume I. The knights earned salaries ranging from fortyfive to ninety silver bezants per month, while Guillem himself earned considerably more than that as caid of the guard. For permitting their absence from the realm, King Jaume claimed a cut of each knight’s salary – fifteen bezants a month – along with a hefty one thousand a month from the caid.24 Complementing this Catalan core were several prominent overseas exiles, including Enrique and Federico of Castile, brothers of King Alfonso IX, and two leading members of the Ghibelline (pro-imperial) faction in Italy: Conrad Capece and Conrad Lancia. These glamorous exiles enhanced al-Mustansir’s prestige and served a practical role as well. Enrique of Castile helped to lead an expedition that crushed an insurrection against the emirate in Milania in 1261. Federico of Castile served on al-Mustansir’s inner council in 1270 as the emir tried to fend off King Louis IX of France’s last crusade.25 The religious sanction attached to this venture did not sever the ties of loyalty and dependency that bound the royal exile to his Hafsid employer.

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Robert Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides, des origines à la fin du XVe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1940–47), 1:39–49; Rouighi, Mediterranean Emirate, pp. 34–37. Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, L'Espagne catalane et le Maghrib au XIII e et XIV e siècles: De la bataille de Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) à l’avènement du sultan mérinide Abou-lHasan (1331) (Paris, 1966), pp. 102–03. Michael Lower, “Tunis in 1270: A Case Study of Interfaith Relations in the Late Thirteenth Century,” International History Review 28 (2006), p. 508.

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Tax Collectors As the wages al-Mustansir paid to his personal guard suggest, European mercenaries did not come cheap. They also required payment in cash rather than kind. In theory, then, they placed heavy fiscal demands on the states that employed them. This was especially the case because the main North African dynasties of the central medieval period struggled to project their power into the countryside. Their efforts to raise revenues beyond their immediate orbit were widely contested and often undermined by collectors with conflicted loyalties. European mercenaries offered an elegant solution to this fiscal dilemma. Their allegiances lay with the central government and, because they were essentially gathering their own salaries, they were highly motivated. Under the Almoravids, the link between recruiting foreign soldiers and raising revenues was strong. When the Almoravid emir Ali b. Yusuf b. Tashfin imported the first units of European cavalry into the Maghrib in the early 1130s, he quickly put them to work collecting the new taxes he had imposed in the countryside to pay their salaries.26 Ibn Khallikan tells a story, later repeated by Ibn al-Athir, about how their work provided Ibn Tumart, the founder of the Almohad movement, with outstanding propaganda material as he drummed up support for his antiAlmoravid insurgency in the Atlas Mountains. Speaking to one group of men in Tinmal, he asked them why their children had blue eyes and light skin while their features were dark. They were too ashamed to answer at first, but after he pressed them they explained that as subjects of the Almoravid emir they owed him kharaj (a kind of land tax) and that every year “Frankish and Rumi [i.e. Roman] mamluks” came to collect it. These agents would expel the men from their houses and spend the night with their wives. The fair-skinned children that caught Ibn Tumart’s eye were the result. The next time the Christians came to the village, Ibn Tumart advised, the men should allow them into their homes and kill them under the cover of nightfall. This is exactly what they did, at least according to Ibn alAthir. Every European tax collector died in the assault except one, who had gone outside to relieve himself.27 This story combined several distasteful elements into one powerfully negative depiction of the European mercenary at work in North Africa. He was a foreigner who would steal your money, take over your house, and impregnate your wife. For all that such imagery helped the Almohads in their campaign against the Almoravids, it did little to dissuade subsequent dynasties from using mercenaries to shake down their rural subjects. In the late thirteenth century, the Marinids assigned this task to Alfonso Pérez de Guzman, who led a force of some 1,600 European mercenaries, freed Christian captives, and Muslim soldiers – all apparently wearing

26 27

Ambrosio Huici Miranda, “Un fragmento inédito de Ibn ‘Idari sobre los Almorávides,” Hésperis-Tamuda 2 (1961), p. 108. Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary, ed. and trans. William MacGuckin de Slane, 4 vols. (Paris, 1842–71), 3:215–16; Ibn al-Athir, Annales du Maghreb et de l’Espagne, trans. Edmond Fagnan (Algiers, 1898), p. 532; Hopkins, Medieval Muslim Government, pp. 54–55.

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the sign of the cross on their arms and backs – into the Moroccan countryside to collect outstanding taxes.28 The symbolism behind wearing the cross is complex and multifaceted. At the least, it suggests again how closely the value of the mercenaries to the regimes that employed them was bound up in the maintenance of a politically and religiously distinct identity, which allowed them to impose the will of the state on indigenous communities without favoritism, partisanship, or mercy. Diplomatic Intermediaries The Christian faith of the mercenaries also allowed them to play an important role outside the domestic sphere. As the Marinids and other successor states to the Almohads developed their political and commercial relations with the northern Mediterranean world, they turned to their Christian guards as intermediaries. Cross-Mediterranean diplomacy was especially intense, and fraught, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. During this time, the Marinids alternated between propping up and destabilizing Granada, the sole surviving Muslim state of Iberia, while the Crown of Aragon sought to extend its influence into the Maghrib in unprecedentedly tangible ways. The mercenaries moved easily within Mediterranean diplomatic networks. Trusted by their North African employers, they also maintained religious and linguistic bonds with their home countries. Their outsider status in North Africa, which proved so valuable in the region’s domestic politics, also gave them a vital role in its external affairs. Some of the most successful of these mercenary-diplomats had connections with the royal houses of Spain. Enrique of Castile, the son of King Fernando whom we saw serving the Hafsids, led an embassy to King Jaume II of Aragon in 1294 on behalf of the emir, Abu Hafs Umar. King Jaume dispatched an envoy in return who negotiated with Enrique over renewing a treaty of peace and commerce between the two realms.29 The ‘Abd al-Wadids were able to do the Hafsids one better when they wanted to form an alliance with the Crown of Aragon in 1325. The rulers of Tlemcen sent to King Jaume II none other than his own illegitimate son, also named Jaume. All told, Jaume of Aragon would lead four embassies to his father over the next several years as Tlemcen sought an alliance against Hafsid Tunis.30 The family tradition of combining service in a North African military guard with diplomatic missions back home to the Crown of Aragon would continue with Jaume of Aragon’s younger brother, the equally illegitimate Napoleon. In the 1320s, he represented the Marinids in their negotiations with Barcelona. In 1337, he switched over to the other side, leading an embassy to the Marinds on behalf of his uncle, King Alfonso IV of Aragon.31

28 29 30 31

Sanjuán, “Mercenarios cristianos,” p. 437. Andrés Giménez Soler, “Caballeros españoles en África y africanos en España,” Revue Hispanique 12 (1905), p. 305. Ibid., pp. 323–42. Ibid., p. 343; Soler, “Caballeros españoles,” Revue Hispanique 16 (1907), p. 67.

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Mercenaries from more modest backgrounds could also take on delicate diplomatic missions. Bernat de Fons was a Templar knight who had fled from the castle of Monzón just weeks before it fell to the forces of King Jaume II of Aragon in June 1309. The king was rounding up the Templars for interrogation after the mass arrests launched against members of the order in France and elsewhere. Bernat eluded the dragnet for a time but in February 1310 he fell into royal custody and was interrogated at Lérida. Once again, though, he escaped, probably heading south. Having abandoned the military order that had given him a career but had crumbled all around him, and now a royal outlaw as well, he fell in with a group of Catalan mercenaries who were conspiring with a dissident Hafsid prince named Abu Zakariya b. al-Lihyani to launch a coup in Tunis. While al-Lihyani attacked the city by land, the mercenaries sailed three armed ships into Tunis harbor, blocking the current emir’s escape by sea. By midNovember 1311, al-Lihyani was master of the city and Bernat de Fons was second in command of his European mercenary guard.32 To strengthen his hold on Tunis, al-Lihyani sought out an alliance with the Crown of Aragon. After several conventional approaches were rebuffed, the emir asked Bernat to write directly to King Jaume II. The Templar turned mercenary for the infidel might seem a strange choice, given his outlaw status back home. But it was precisely Bernat’s desperation to be restored to royal favor that al-Lihyani was looking to exploit. Writing on al-Lihyani’s command, Bernat revealed to Jaume that the emir was a Christian “in his heart” and wanted to receive baptism. Besides dangling al-Lihyani’s conversion, Bernat also stressed the emir’s willingness to surrender Tunis to the royal house of Aragon. Al-Lihyani had confided that he had just two brothers in the world: King Jaume and King Federico of Sicily. The emir was a gracious lord who would happily submit to his brothers when the time appeared right.33 Throughout his letter, Bernat played on the rhetorical possibilities that his ambiguous status as both an agent of the emir and an Aragonese subject provided. He stressed that he was Jaume’s “humble servant,” that he always did what the king ordered “by word and deed,” and that his aim was to preserve the king’s honor and that of his men. At the same time, he noted that he was “alcaid of all the Christian soldiers who are in the lordship of the king of Tunis,” that the emir was his intimate friend, and that they spoke together nearly every day about embracing Christianity.34 The self-image that Bernat presented in the letter – the committed Christian and Aragonese loyalist who helps both causes by

32

33

34

Alan Forey, The Fall of the Templars in the Crown of Aragon (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 28, 76, 111; Michael Lower, “Ibn al-Lihyani: Sultan of Tunis and Would-Be Christian Convert,” Mediterranean Historical Review 24 (2009), p. 19. Ángeles Masiá de Ros, La corona de Aragón y los estados del norte de África: Política de Jaume II y Alfonso IV en Egipto, Ifriquía y Tremecén (Barcelona, 1951), no. 186 (pp. 490–92). Ibid.

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leading a Muslim prince to the true faith and political submission – was well chosen to elicit sympathy from King Jaume for al-Lihyani and himself. The letter succeeded on both counts. King Jaume entered into diplomatic negotiations with al-Lihyani and received Bernat de Fons as a Tunisian envoy in the summer of 1313. The matter of Bernat’s status as an outlaw Templar was also resolved. He received absolution from the archdeacon of Besalú and a sizable pension from the crown. He then returned to Tunis and helped to conduct the final negotiations that resulted in the signing of a ten-year truce between the Hafsids and the Crown of Aragon in February 1314. Even after the peace was agreed, Bernat continued to live a liminal existence. He returned to the Crown of Aragon in 1315 to enjoy his pension, then had it taken away when he returned to Tunis (no source reveals why) later in the year without royal permission. By 1316 he was back in the Crown again, with his stipend and arms restored. He died the following year, leaving behind armor and horses valuable enough to be requisitioned by the king and distributed as presents to his favorites.35 His example is perhaps an extreme one: most of the mercenary diplomats who are known to us from this period were not former Templar knights, fighting monks devoted to the cause of crusade. But Bernat’s case highlights how well suited Christian mercenaries were to the role of inter-religious go-between. By holding fast to his identity as a Christian fighting man, Bernat was able to cross the religious divide repeatedly and productively, to the mutual advantage of his home and host societies. Maintaining Difference Since much of a medieval Christian mercenary’s value to his Muslim employer – as a soldier, bodyguard, tax collector, and diplomat – was linked to his status as a political and religious outsider in the Islamic world, both the mercenaries and their masters went to great lengths to avoid eliding the differences between them. One common strategy was to build separate quarters for the mercenaries, where they could live in isolation from the broader community. Simon Barton has shown how the Almohads housed at least some of their European mercenaries in an exclusively Christian suburb near Marrakesh that is called Elbora (and sometimes Ebora or el-Bora) in European-language sources. In January 1218, the Castilian aristocrat and Almohad mercenary Álvar Pérez de Castro had a charter written up “on the road that leads from Ebora to Marrakesh.” A year later, his fellow Castilian Count Fernando Núñez de Lara died in Elbora, after having joined the Hospitallers on his deathbed. A Christian captive who lived in Marrakesh in the mid-sixteenth century toured the ruins of Elbora and described it as a large settlement surrounded by impressive walls.36 The Marinid emir Abu Yusuf Yaqub took a similar approach to

35 36

Forey, Fall of the Templars in Aragon, pp. 141–42, 216, 223; Lower, “Ibn al-Lihyani,” p. 21. Simon Barton, “From Mercenary to Crusader: The Career of Álvar Pérez de Castro (d. 1239) Re-Examined,” in Church, State, Vellum, and Stone: Essays on Medieval Spain in Honor of John Williams, ed. Therese Martin and Julie A. Harris (Leiden, 2005), pp. 120–23.

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housing European soldiers. When he established New Fez in the 1270s, he set aside a quarter there for the Christian mercenaries in his army, where they could live apart from their Muslim neighbors.37 These attempts to isolate the mercenaries from North African society went along with encouragement of vigorous Christian worship. The Almohad caliph al-Ma’mun built a church for his mercenaries dedicated to Mary and even allowed the ringing of bells, a practice forbidden in the so-called Pact of Umar, the document that set forth traditional norms governing Christian and Jewish life in the dar al-Islam.38 In fifteenth-century Tunis, the Christian mercenaries of the Hafsids worshipped in a church dedicated to Francis of Assisi, which a European visitor described as “very beautiful and great.”39 It was large enough to house eight altars and numerous precious ornaments. Clergy celebrated Latin mass there every day. The mercenaries themselves would sing along, although they could not understand the language. This church of St. Francis had three large bells and several smaller ones, which could also be rung, a privilege not granted to the Genoese and Venetians who maintained chapels in their Tunisian merchant factories.40 This description of mercenary religious life in late medieval Tunis comes to us from Jean Adorno, who composed an account of his father Anselme’s voyage to the Maghrib and the Holy Land in 1470. Anselme Adorno belonged to a branch of a prominent Venetian family that had settled in Flanders. His journey around the Mediterranean, which was sponsored by Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, was part pilgrimage and part reconnaissance mission for a prospective crusade. Given this latter aim, he paid close attention to the military resources at the Hafsids’ disposal, including their elite Christian guard. Anselme was amazed by these strangely hybrid figures, whom he called “Christians of the rabat,” using a term for a Muslim religious community associated with jihad. However evocative such a description of these soldiers might sound to modern ears, his understanding of its origins was actually more prosaic. He thought the label derived from the neighborhood in Tunis where they lived, “a place called Rabat.” This neighborhood consisted of several streets closed off by gates near the Hafsid palace complex in the western end of the city. Its inhabitants were not recent transplants; they were the descendants of the long line of mercenaries who had served the Hafsids for over two hundred years. Anselme described them as culturally and linguistically assimilated into Tunisian society. They were “entirely like the Moors in relation to language, culture, and means of living.” Because the emir loved them very much, and counted on them to be his defenders and bodyguards, he had granted them “the greatest privileges.” When he 37 38 39 40

Évariste Lévi-Provençal, “Un nouveau texte d’histoire mérinide: Le Musnad d’Ibn Marzuk,” Hespéris 5 (1925), p. 45. Ibn Khaldun, Kitab al-‘ibar, 6:530–31 (Histoire des Berbères, 2:235–36). Robert Brunschvig, Deux récits de voyage inédits en Afrique du nord au XVe siècle: Abdalbasit b. Halil et Adorne (Paris, 1936), p. 157. Ibid.

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went off on campaign, they provided him with his closest personal escort. Not even the emir’s son dared come closer. They dressed like pagans, except for their headgear. “They do not wear turbans on their head, but rather small hoods [capucia parvula] in the Teutonic style.” Their wives, by contrast, dressed entirely “as Moorish women do.” The emir would invite the spouses of the soldiers to festivals and celebrations of marriage and childbirth.41 Culture and religion are often seen as powerfully linked in the Middle Ages. What Anselme Adorno describes, however, is a group that had integrated culturally while remaining a distinct religious minority. With only their Germanic hoods remaining as an external marker of their distant origins, these soldiers nonetheless retained an attachment to Christianity that reminded Anselme of the vibrant faith of the Flemish peasants he knew back home. Just as the peasants did, the mercenaries would sing along to the Latin mass even as they used a different language for everyday speech, in this case Arabic rather than Flemish or French. As late as the fifteenth century, the religious difference between the soldiers and their masters remained essential to their function. Conclusion Scholarly approaches toward the many borders of belief and belonging that criss-crossed the medieval Mediterranean have shifted significantly in recent years. The earlier tendency was to dwell on the strength of the borders and the divisions they enforced. The emphasis now is on their relative permeability and the complex networks of interaction that could be built across and between them.42 At first glance, the mercenary guards seem to fit comfortably into this fluid environment that scholars now describe. The easy flow of soldiers back and forth across the mercenary market does demonstrate that boundaries of all kinds were far from impermeable in the late medieval western Mediterranean. But a closer analysis of the workings of that market suggests that various forms of allegiance – to tribe, monarch, language, and religion – may have mattered more than we currently imagine, although perhaps not in the way we might expect. The medieval Christian mercenaries of the Maghrib and the Muslim rulers who hired them did not try to break down the differences in fighting style, culture, and

41 42

Ibid., pp. 157–58. Important discussions of this shift include Hussein Anwar Fancy, “Theologies of Violence: The Recruitment of Muslim Soldiers by the Crown of Aragon,” Past and Present 221 (2013), pp. 42–43, 72–73; Brian A. Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050–1614 (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 508–35; Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore, 2003); Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York, 2006); Eric R. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Sciences, 124th ser., 2 (Baltimore, 2006).

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belief that stood between them. To the contrary: both parties prized and protected these distinctions. The mercenary was valuable to the regime he served because he fought in a style that diversified its military options, kept apart from local networks of power that threatened its rule, and maintained a religious identification that facilitated tax collection at home and inter-religious diplomacy abroad. As the “Christians of the Rabat” who protected the Hafsid emir in fifteenth-century Tunis make clear, the religious difference was especially critical. In effect, the mercenaries were able to serve a crucial double function, gaining popularity by their ability to mark off and at the same time cross the religious boundary between Christianity and Islam. Powerful assertions of religious difference are usually thought to have been a source of anxiety, provocation, and conflict in the pre-modern world. Studying the medieval Christian soldiers of North Africa suggests a possible exception to this grim rule. For the mercenaries and their masters, religious difference could be a positive value worth maintaining and a source of stability and cooperation in a pre-secular age.

7 Medieval Irregular Warfare, c. 1000–1300 John France

Insurgent actions are similar in character to all others fought by second-rate troops: they start out full of vigor and enthusiasm, but there is little level-headedness and tenacity in the long run.1

Thus Clausewitz dismisses irregular soldiers, but he was writing in an age when the contrast between regular and irregular warfare was very sharp. On the one hand there were the state armies of uniformed men, often with bands, marching in set formations and committed to well-defined savage and close-range confrontations. On the other there were what we have learned to call guerrillas, who wore no uniforms and were often poorly armed, wholly indistinguishable from the rest of the population, and who operated hit and run by ambush. The line between these was slightly blurred because various powers deployed irregulars, such as so-called “Croats” and Hussars, and even by the existence of sharpshooters like the British Rifle Brigade, but these were essentially only ancillary to the regulars. This sharp distinction between official and “other” forces has imprinted itself on our consciousness and forms the whole basis of military law as applied to relations between armies and populations. Yet it was a phenomenon of a particular age. War has changed since, and it was certainly very different from this stereotype before, and especially in the Middle Ages. For in medieval Western Europe there was no such thing as a regular standing army. Towards 1100 the English crown, with what was then its unusual tax-raising capacity, had established a royal military household, but it formed only the kernel around which real armies could be organized in their short-term existences.2 For even the English crown could not support large forces over long periods of time. At the end of the twelfth century, Richard I of England (1189–99) conceived of the idea of raising a permanent body of 300 knights, apparently to be paid for by remitting “feudal” service for taxes. Magnate resistance scuppered the idea, and Richard

1 2

Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and tr. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ, 1976), p. 482. J. O. Prestwich, “War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 4 (1954), 19–43; Marjorie Chibnall, “Mercenaries and the Familia Regis under Henry I ,” History 62 (1977), 15–23; Michael Prestwich, “The Military Household of the Norman Kings,” English Historical Review 96 (1981), 1–37.

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could not pay for it out of his own resources because it would have cost over half the normal annual income of the crown.3 In fact, in the eleventh century the English kings were unusual, because most monarchs were struggling to assert the ascendancy implied by their title. Essentially, kings were landowners amongst other landowners who all felt they could use armed force in pursuit of their ends. In 1187 Reynald of Châtillon, lord of Kerak, raided a caravan in defiance of his king’s treaty with Saladin, and when upbraided responded “that he was just as much lord in his own land as he [the king] was of his.”4 It has rightly been said that in the eleventh century “the age of kings seemed to have passed and that of princes to be the future.”5 But even those princes could not easily command the forces of the leading men within their principalities who equally felt they had a right to resort to arms. Chivalry was, at heart, violence used for private ends. When Parisians complained that the feuds of the nobility were weakening the French realm threatened by Henry V of England (r. 1413–22), the duke of Berry responded: “We fight each other when we please and we make peace when we see fit.”6 So monarchs had no monopoly of violence such as Clausewitz assumed for the state. In this situation, what is irregular warfare? No matter who raised a force, it was essentially made up in the same way – of mounted armored men who formed a relatively small strike force, together with fairly poorly equipped infantry who provided labor for sieges, willing plunderers and mass in the rare event of a major battle. The mounted men came from the gentle-born servants of the great, but they were mostly estate managers, and only a few were professional soldiers. The foot were drawn from amongst the more unsettled and adventurous young men of the peasantry, and perhaps stiffened by the employment of mercenaries, though this was very expensive. All provided their own dress and weapons, so there was no “uniform,” and for the most part they found their own food and other equipment. Of course, except in so far as they could train themselves as individuals or very small groups, they were not trained, and commanders relied on what I have called elsewhere their “native skills.”7 A large army was simply an agglomeration of such retinues. The retinue of any great magnate, while it might be quite large, would be composed of people from his scattered lands who did not know one another.8 As a consequence the coherence we associate with “regular” forces barely existed. Crusades were collections of such armies, and individuals were often only loosely tied to leaders.

3 4 5 6 7 8

John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (London, 1999), p. 58. The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, ed. Peter Edbury (Aldershot, 1996), p. 29. Jean Flori, L’idéologie de la glaive: préhistoire de la chevalerie (Geneva, 1983), p. 168. Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999). John France, Perilous Glory. Understanding Western Warfare (New Haven, 2011), p. 25 and many other points. Michel Bur, La formation du comté de Champagne, v. 950–v. 1150 (Nancy, 1977) is a fine study of a great fief of the French crown with very useful maps of the count’s holdings.

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Moreover, in this period tactics were dominated by destruction and ravaging. This served to feed and provide loot for an invading force and to undermine the economy of their enemy. William of Poitiers described the Conqueror in what was intended as approving terms: This was his chosen way of attack: to strike fear into the settlement by frequent, lengthy expeditions in that territory, to lay waste the vines, fields and domains, to capture fortified places and put garrisons in them wherever it was desirable; finally to attack the region relentlessly with a great multitude of troubles.9

Such a style of war inevitably engendered skirmishes between attackers and defenders, and these emphasized the personal qualities of bravery and skill so crucial to chivalry, rather than discipline and cohesion essential for large-scale operations. It is really what eighteenth-century soldiers described as petite guerre. In such war the distinction between civilian and soldier busy inflicting “multitude of troubles” was fine, especially as plunder seems often to have formed a major part of the wages paid to the fighter. And, of course, this was not so very different from war on the fringes of the settled lands, which certainly constituted a form of irregular warfare. On the borders between England and Wales a bloody struggle persisted for centuries. Raiding and ambush were classic irregular tactics used by both sides. The savagery was notable. On the Welsh border the taking of heads was particularly condemned by the English as barbaric – and indeed the same kind of attitudes appeared with regard to the Scots.10 It is interesting that in the years when Byzantium had a long frontier with the Caliphate local forces were encouraged to adopt the classic tactics of the guerrilla, but of course this was ancillary to a regular army, the only one of its period.11 So there is a vast range of irregular warfare; but within the settled lands, given that so many could raise such forces, were there no regulars or irregulars? Putting the question in this way emphasizes the key question of authorization. In medieval society authorization was a matter of social status. This was the sharply delineated world of the “Three Orders,” of those who fight, those who pray and those who serve, and it was the first group who felt that they alone could grant authorization.12 In many ways the key text is the Annals of St Bertin, composed in the late ninth century at a time when the West Frankish monarchy 9 10

11

12

William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. and tr. R. H. C. Davies and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), p. 61. Frederick C. Suppe, “The Cultural Significance of Decapitation in High Medieval Wales and the Marches,” Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 36 (1989), 147–60, and the same author’s Military Institutions on the Welsh Marches: Shropshire 1066–1300 (Woodbridge, 1994); Sean Davies, “The Teulu c. 633–1283,” Welsh History Review 21 (2003), 413–54; John Gillingham, “ Conquering Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain,” The Haskins Society Journal 4 (1992), 67–84. Lucas McMahon, “The Past and Future of De velitatione bellica and Byzantine guerrilla warfare,” MA dissertation (Central European University, 2015), argues that this kind of warfare was a strong and continuing tradition in Byzantium. George Duby, The Three Orders. Feudal Society Imagined, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980).

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was breaking down under the strain of internal feuding and external attack, especially from the Vikings. The entry for 859 reads: The Danes ravaged the places beyond the Scheldt. Some of the common people living between the Seine and the Loire formed a sworn association amongst themselves, and fought bravely against the Danes on the Seine. But because their association had been made without due consideration, they were easily slain by our more powerful people.13

This passage has been much argued about, and it has been used to assert that this was the start of a process of demilitarizing the lower classes of medieval society who became, as it were, the onlookers and sometime victims of war, but who, because of their helpless status, were spared its ravages. This, in my opinion, cannot be true because kings, when they could, were perfectly prepared to mobilize the broad mass of the population in times of need. The German kings levied infantry forces into the eleventh century.14 William II Rufus of England (1087–1100) called all men to arms against the rebellion of 1088.15 In a famous illustration of John of Worcester’s Chronicle in Corpus Christi Oxford Ms 157, Henry I of England (1100–35) dreamed of the clergy renouncing him, the nobles in splendid armor seeking to depose him, and the poor, although armed only with scythes, pitchforks and spades, rising against him. In 1124 Louis VI (1108–37) of France called together a great host against invasion by the Emperor Henry V (1099–1125) of Germany, which seems to have encompassed more than merely the knightly entourages of the French nobility.16 In 1181 Henry II of England (1154–89) promulgated the Assizes of Arms in two forms – for England and for his continental lands – demanding that all freemen should be able to arm themselves in a manner appropriate to their status.17 The Assize was reissued and updated for England in 1252 and applied to all able-bodied men even down to the poorest who could afford only a bow and a few arrows. It was later embedded in the Statute of Winchester of 1285.18 King John devised a system by which the whole male population could be mobilized for the defense of the realm when a French invasion threatened in 1205 and again in 1213.19 Clearly the huge English infantry armies raised by Edward I (1272–1307) and refined by Edward III (1327–77) did not appear from out of the blue.20

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

The Annals of St Bertin, tr. Janet L. Nelson (Manchester, 1991), p. 89. David S. Bachrach, Warfare in Tenth-Century Germany (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 70–101. Robert Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 261–62. Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, tr. Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead (Washington, DC, 1992), pp. 127–32. English Historical Documents, ed. David C. Douglas, 12 vols. (London, 1953), 2:416. Hans Delbr ück, History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History, vol. III: The Middle Ages, tr. Walter J. Renfroe Jr. (Lincoln, NE, 1982), pp. 172–77. Austin Lane Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta 1087–1216 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 439–40; Bartlett, England, p. 262. Michael Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England, 1272–1377 (London, 1980) and idem, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: the English Experience (New Haven, CT, 1996).

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In fact there were a number of occasions when the military potential of the peasants and others who were not of the elite class was revealed. The quotation from the Annals of St Bertin stresses the importance of lordly sanction, but there was another kind, because the Christian Church had always maintained a distance from secular power. In parts of central France in the tenth and eleventh centuries the breakdown of royal power prompted the bishops to demand that the arms-bearers swear oaths to maintain the peace in great assemblies such as that recorded by Rodulfus Glaber. However, such moral pressure was not enough, as this chronicler noted: “like a dog returning to its vomit or a pig to wallowing in its mire, in many respects they broke their own sworn agreements.”21 In fact, from the first it was recognized that moral pressure was not enough. Bishop Guy of Le Puy (c. 975–93) inaugurated the movement and was able to enlist his relatives to “persuade” the recalcitrant.22 Aimo de Bourbon, archbishop of Bourges (1031–71) carried this to its logical conclusion by creating a militia of peasants led by some nobles to fight those who defied the peace. This was destroyed by a noble army in 1038, ushering in a period of cooperation between churchmen and aristocrats which acted to conciliate and thereby preserve the peace.23 It is possible that Hereward the Wake had humble people in his rebellion against the Normans, and he certainly seems to have been a mercenary at some stage of his short career, which has been enshrined in romance.24 But a much more notable example of non-elite military organization emerged rather more than a century later and resulted in a sharp clash between social and ecclesiastical authorizations. By the 1170s central and southern France was plagued by mercenaries as a result of a complicated series of wars involving the Angevins, the Capetians, the count of Toulouse along with other major southern magnates, and the kings of Aragon.25 At the same time the Church was threatened by the emergence of the heretics we nowadays call the Cathars.26 In 1179 Third Lateran Council equated these scourges and proclaimed:

21 22 23

24

25 26

Rodulfus Glaber, The Five Books of the Histories, ed. and tr. John France, in Rodulfus Glaber Opera, ed. John France, Neithard Bulst and Paul Reynolds (Oxford, 1989), pp. 194–99. H. E. J. Cowdrey, “The Peace and the Truce of God in the Eleventh Century,” Past and Present 46 (1970), 42–67. Thomas N. Bisson, “The Organized Peace in Southern France and Catalonia ca. 1140–1223,” American Historical Review 82 (1977), 290–311 at p. 311; Thomas Head, “The Judgment of God: Andrew of Fleury’s Account of the Peace League of Bourges,” in Thomas Head and Richard Landes, The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp. 219–38. For his career in general see Peter Rex, The English Resistance: the Underground War against the Normans (Stroud, 2005) and for his service in Flanders see Elisabeth van Houts, “Hereward and Flanders,” Anglo-Saxon England 28 (1999), 201–23. Richard Benjamin, “A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets 1156–96,” Historical Research 61 (1988), 270–85. For a full discussion of the circumstances see John France, “People against Mercenaries. The Capuchins in Southern Gaul,” Journal of Medieval Military History 8 (2010), 1–22.

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Whoever, following the council of holy bishops and priests, takes up arms against them, will enjoy a remission of two years penance and will be placed under the protection of the Church just like those who undertake the journey to Jerusalem.27

This is an important example of the diversification of crusading and forms a precedent for the eventual “Albigensian Crusade.” Undoubtedly what was envisaged by the fathers is what happened in 1181 when Henry de Marcy, formerly abbot of Cîteaux and by then cardinal of Albano, led the “Crusade against Lavaur” which violently eliminated a major heretic center thirty kilometers north of Toulouse where Count Roger of Béziers, his wife and numerous heretics had taken refuge. By the terms of the surrender all the heretics renounced their errors, though it seems that most soon lapsed.28 But the equation of heretics and mercenaries produced a rather different result. In 1182 Durand, a poor man, described as a carpenter in some sources, approached Bishop Peter of Le Puy reporting a vision of the Virgin who gave him a picture of herself with Christ in her arms, bearing an inscription, Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata Mundi, dona nobis pacem. She further told him to ask the bishop to organize a fraternity to uphold the peace. This movement spread with extraordinary rapidity across vast areas of central and southern France, and even hostile chroniclers like the Anonymous of Laon and Gervase of Canterbury pay tribute to its good discipline. All sworn members wore a hood of white cloth with the badge presented by the Virgin upon it, hence the name Capuchins. This fraternity was clearly acting in accord with Canon 27 of the Fourth Lateran Council in consulting with bishops and seeking to attack the mercenaries, and under its terms shared something of the status of crusaders. We hear most about them in the Auvergne. They attacked a mercenary center at Neufchâtel, forcing the famous Mercadier to flee for his life, and drove out a group of paleari who took refuge with the lord of Dun-le-Roi near Bourges, whose lord was obliged by the Capuchins to give them up to massacre. Shortly after they were again victorious at Millau, where they hanged 50 along with two of their leaders, “Kerbogah” and one Raymond the Brown. There are witnesses to the movement from Burgundy to the Midi. What is interesting about these Capuchins is that they were clearly ordinary people, not of the elite arms-bearers. Some contemporaries were clearly horrified by the prospect of the armed masses. Eustace of Auxerre claimed that they had been tempted by the devil: There was no longer fear or respect for superiors. All strove to acquire liberty, saying that it belonged to them from the time of Adam and Eve, from the very day of creation. They

27 28

Karl Joseph von Hefele, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, ed. Henri Leclerq, 9 vols. (Hildesheim, 1973) 5.2:1106–08. Geoffroy de Vigeois, Chronica, in Novae bibliothecae manuscriptorum et librorum, ed. Philippe Labbe, 2 vols. (Paris, 1657), 2:326; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1878), 2:160–66; Yves M.-J. Congar, “Henri de Marcy, abbé de Clairvaux, cardinal évêque d’Albano et légat pontifical,” Analecta Monastica 5 (Studia Anselmiana, fasc. 43, Rome 1958), pp. 35–38.

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did not understand that serfdom is the punishment of sin! The result was that there was no longer any distinction between the great and the small, but a fatal confusion tending to ruin the institutions which rule us all, through the will of God and the agency of the power of this earth.29

As a result, Bishop Hugh of Auxerre took his army to the Capuchin center of Gy and suppressed the movement, taking away the offending peasants’ hoods and ordering that they, in all seasons and whatever the weather, should always go bare-headed, though he remitted this sentence at the request of his uncle, Bishop Gui of Sens.30 Another source tell us that: This foolish and undisciplined folk had reached heights of madness; they dared to notify counts, viscounts and princes that they should treat their subjects more gently than was their usual custom, under pain of quickly experiencing the meaning of their anger.31

Yet this view of social revolutionaries seeking to right wrongs is somewhat belied by the fact that, in accordance with the Lateran Council Decree, the Capuchins had consulted with bishops. Moreover, the Anonymous gives us a full account of their statutes, which demanded the payment of an annual fee of twelve denarii and banned gambling, ostentatious clothing, entry to taverns and the swearing of oaths, while prescribing attendance at mass. Like the Temple and the Hospital, the Capuchins allowed priests, but banned them from fighting.32 It seems likely that the sight of the people made the elite queasy, and it has to be said that both Eustace and the Anonymous of Laon were writing some time after the events they describe.33 What happened to the Capuchins? In Burgundy, where they seem to have been rather feeble, they were easily put down by the bishop of Auxerre. In their heartland of the Auvergne they were destroyed because they attacked the wrong mercenaries. Geoffroy de Vigeois, who witnessed the whole movement, reports a savage raid by mercenaries led by Richard’s commander, Louvart. This was repelled by the arrival of the Capuchins.34 The Anonymous of Laon, in an aside, says that Louvart (Lupacius) destroyed the Capuchins at the “Portes de Berthe.” It was one thing to drive out discharged mercenaries, even when hanging around awaiting employment enjoying the hospitality of local magnates, and even to

29

30 31 32 33 34

Gesta episcoporum Autissiodorensium, in Louis Maximilien Duru, Bibliothèque historique de l’Yonne, 2 vols. (Auxerre and Paris, 1850–63), 1:444–46; tr. from Achille Luchaire, Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus, tr. Edward Benjamin Krehbiel (London, 1912), p. 17. Hugh’s predecessor, Bishop Guillaume de Toucy (1167–81), was the brother of Gui of Sens and, therefore, Hugh’s uncle: Gesta episcoporum Autissiodorensium, 1:421. Anonymous of Laon, Chronicon universale, ed. A. Cartellieri and B. von Wolf Stechele (Leipzig and Paris, 1929), p. 40. Ibid., pp. 38–39. For a detailed study of the Capuchins see France, “Capuchins as Crusaders,” Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), 77–94. Geoffroy de Vigeois, Chronica, 2: 340–41.

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massacre them, and quite another to take on the princely army of Richard as duke of Aquitaine, which ultimately crushed the Capuchins.35 The Capuchins are important because they indicate the considerable military potential of the non-elite classes. They may have known of and been encouraged by earlier events in much the same area. In August 1173 some of Henry II’s Brabançons were wiped out by angry local peasants at St Jacques-de-Beuvron. In 1176 another group was destroyed at St Mégrin, while in 1177 some of Richard’s mercenaries suffered the same fate.36 It is worth noting also that in 1190 at the siege of Acre the foot became disillusioned with their betters and launched an attack on Saladin’s camp on their own initiative.37 At about the same time a woman claimed from the Count of Hainaut the arms of an enemy knight whom she had knocked off his horse – alas we do not know if she got them.38 Even more striking was the campaign in 1216–17 waged by William of Kensham – Willikin of the Weald – against the English barons who had rebelled against John (1199–1216) and later Henry III (1216–72) and were seeking to place Prince Louis of France on the English throne. He is reputed to have enlisted 1,000 archers who terrorized the invaders with sudden ambushes, even harassing the Anglo-French army besieging Dover and burning its siege engines. This was classic guerrilla warfare, and while not in itself decisive, it sapped the strength of the enemy. William of Kensham’s remarkable activities were recognized by the biographer of William Marshall and have been recently by Sean McGlynn. It is interesting that his men cut off the heads of the enemy dead – this is the savagery of irregular warfare.39 Now clearly I have merely scratched the surface here in discussing the military potential of the non-elite classes. Space is the obvious reason but some phenomena have been deliberately excluded. The first of the crusaders to reach Constantinople in 1096 are often called the “People’s Crusade,” although this title was debunked by Frederick Duncalf as long ago as 1921. In reality these very disparate groups, which probably did contain many poor and non-combatants, were organized and led by nobles in much the same way as the armies which followed them, except that they lacked anyone with undisputed status to act as a commander.40 Then there are the city militias whose armies are often

35

36 37 38 39 40

Anonymous of Laon, Chronicon, pp. 40, 58 (tr. from Luchaire, Social France, p. 17). On Mercadier in general and his relations with Richard I see John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, 1999). France, Western Warfare, pp. 74–75 and n. 28. “Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, 1184–97,” tr. Peter Edbury, in idem, The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 94–95. Gislebert de Mons, Chronique, ed. Léon Vanderkindere (Brussels, 1905), p. 232, translation: Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainaut, tr. Laura Napran (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 132. Sean McGlynn, Blood Cries Afar. The Forgotten Invasion of England 1216 (Stroud, 2011), pp. 179–80, 189, 195–96, 201, 204, 220. Frederic Duncalf, “The Peasants’ Crusade,” American Historical Review 26 (1921), 440–53; even Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade. A New History (Oxford, 2004), pp. 78, 101, although recognizing that there were nobles in the ranks, uses this inaccurate title.

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described as largely infantry. In Galbert’s famous Murder of Charles the Good it comes as a surprise to note that the citizens of Bruges possessed swords, which we think of as elite weapons.41 But the apparently well-armed citizens were the military expression of an emerging city government and highly amenable to control by traditional elites once they had come to agreements with their leaders. In a rather different vein Galbert mentions the “greedy band of plunderers” from surrounding villages who joined in the siege of the castle, and refers often to similar groups.42 Undoubtedly it was from such people that retinue infantry and mercenaries were drawn. In the case of the Italian city-states we are in the grip of Italian exceptionalism: the notion that the cities produced sturdy, freedomloving infantry. I have looked rather closely at the Italian city-states at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.43 But even at a much earlier date it seems to me that the armies of the city-states were dominated by the rural nobility and the urban patricians. Conflicts, such as that of the Patarini of Milan, sometimes portrayed as the emergence of civic freedom, increasingly seem to me to be factional quarrels in which the armies differ not at all from those of the great lords of northern Europe. In medieval society authorization is the key to defining irregular forces, and legitimate authorizing power lay with the social and political elite. At the same time the Church also had a legitimizing authority in military affairs, most clearly evident in the crusading movement. Ecclesiastical and secular elites usually worked together although the Church always maintained a degree of autonomy. As a result the legitimizing power of lords in time became vested in supreme rulers, and later in the state which gradually established its monopoly of violence. The Church’s material authority, by contrast, waned and ultimately emerged as the power of moral judgment, which underlay the nineteenth-century insistence on the separation of soldier and civilian that has become established as a norm in advanced states. In this sense the legitimizing power of religion influenced the actions of states, though rarely decisively. This evolution was European and was certainly not universal. In particular a radically different situation evolved in Islam. For all Muslims legitimacy in power lies in following the example of the Prophet, who combined secular and sacred authority over all the faithful. After his death many Muslims demanded that the choice of his successor, the Caliph, be limited to a particular line of descent from his family, giving birth to the Shi’ite movement (itself very divided) and their pursuit of the “hidden Imam”: yet others, the Kharijis, took the position that any of the faithful could be chosen. The eventual solution, which commanded most support, was the establishment of Caliphs drawn from the wider

41 42 43

Galbert of Bruges, The Murder of Charles the Good, tr. James Bruce Ross (New York, 1982), p. 175. Ibid., p. 160. John France, “Campements fortifiés, sièges et engins de siège dans la vallée du Po au XIII siècle,” in Artillerie et Fortification 1200–1600, ed. Nicolas Prouteau, Emmanuel de CrouyChanel and Nicolas Faucherre (Rennes, 2011), 33–40.

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family of the Prophet, and this gave rise to the Umayyad, Abassid and Ottoman Caliphates revered by the Sunni. Troops were raised by these institutions and formed the official armies of Islam. At the same time a powerful tradition of volunteering for military service arose, and these mujahideen became a regular feature of Muslim armies fighting non-believers in jihad. At the battle of Antioch on 28 June 1098 it was these Islamic volunteers who suffered most of the casualties in the triumph of the First Crusade.44 But even the Sunni Caliphate was often disputed and now has long perished. The power to raise troops, therefore, fell upon local rulers, but their legitimacy was open to dispute and was sustained only by success and prestige. Their successors, the European-style states established in the twentieth century, were essentially foreign impositions, and the corruption of the narrow elites who dominated them has contributed to the alienation of the masses. In these circumstances service to God in the form of militant rebellion is natural and understandable. In this sense the ISIS Caliphate is a shrewdly judged Islamic response to the problems of the Arab world. It reestablishes the supremacy of religion, always seen as the ultimate legitimizing authority, in the affairs of the faithful. Our modern concepts of regular and irregular forces, therefore, arose from very particular historical events and cultures which are specifically European and draw upon European concepts of legitimacy. Even in Europe legitimacy and, therefore, irregularity or regularity, are quite elusive concepts, and they are not replicated in different contexts. In Europe our ideas about the conduct of war were almost set in stone by the experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Clausewitz almost always uses the term “insurrection” when he discusses irregular warfare, and this is logical in that he saw the state as monopolizing violence.45 But the underlying notion of legitimacy varies enormously across the world and even in Europe his standpoint was of recent birth.

44 45

Kemal ad-Din, “ La Chronique d’ Alep ,” in Recueil des historiens des croisades. Historiens orientaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1872–1906), 3:583. E.g. Clausewitz, On War, p. 482.

8 Muslim Responses to Western Intervention: A Comparative Study of the Crusades and Post-2003 Iraq Alex Mallett

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to various groups within conflicts that can be described as proxies or irregulars or, to use a term often employed within academic studies, “violent non-state actors” (VNSAs).1 One reason for this increased focus is the growing number of VNSAs in modern conflicts. More important factors, however, seem to be the growing influence and widening geographical reach of VNSAs and the increasing use of various asymmetrical forms of warfare that challenge existing preconceptions of both the nature of warfare and the legal frameworks surrounding definitions of conflict. This change in approach has been demonstrated most clearly, and to the greatest extent so far, by various Islamist groups, particularly al-Qaeda and, most recently, ISIS, through their global networks, their attacks on cities around the world, and their use of digital media to reach a global audience. Yet despite their increase in significance and numbers in the contemporary world, and the consequent increased focus on them in current scholarship, VNSAs have always existed, and have been active throughout history, in all regions of the world. Examples include those primarily interested in profit, such as pirates and bandits, or those attempting to realize more political goals, such as the Maccabees or Hereward the Wake. Unsurprisingly, such actors also appear in the annals of Islamic history; as well as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and various other modern Islamist groups, such forces include the Barbary corsairs of the early modern period,2 the Anatolian frontier ghāzī warriors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,3 and the various jihad warriors who fought on the Arab–Byzantine frontier

1 2

3

There have been dozens of examples of such studies in the last decade; see, for example, Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics, ed. Klejda Mulaj (London, 2010). Adrian Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean (London, 2011); Jacques Heers, The Barbary Corsairs: Warfare in the Mediterranean, 1480–1580 (London, 2003). Claude Cahen, The Formation of Turkey (London, 2001), pp. 227–33; idem, Pre-Ottoman Turkey (London, 1968), pp. 303–14; Spirios Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor (Berkeley, 1971), esp. pp. 133–42, 258–85.

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in the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid periods.4 Of course, these were operating before the Westphalian “nation-state” idea had been developed, and so were not VNSAs in the same sense that the term is used today. However, even before 1648 there was the idea that violence needed to be legitimated by the “state,” even though this was not the “state” as we understand it today; for example, the codification of the rules on jihad during the ʿAbbāsid period was, to a large extent, a response to individual Muslims carrying out raids on Byzantine territory that upset the balance of power between the two sides and interfered with and disrupted the caliphate’s relations with Byzantium.5 While these examples have all been essentially offensive forces, there have also been numerous examples of VNSAs being involved in Islamic resistance movements in more defensive ways, which can be defined as reacting to outside, non-Islamic invasions of regions defined as Muslim lands: examples of such include resistance to Byzantine attacks on Syria, such as those of the eighth to eleventh centuries,6 to the Reconquista,7 to the Portuguese in Goa,8 and to British rule in India.9 Given this, it will be useful to compare the responses of various Islamic VNSAs to invasion from across the centuries. This is not just something to be carried out for its historical interest, but a way in which it should be possible both to gain a better understanding of Islamic societies and to contribute to modern public policy debates. It has become rather axiomatic that, in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Coalition forces planned successfully how they would defeat the Iraqi army, but failed to design any strategy for governing the country in the post-war period, and failed to anticipate the type of insurgent response that followed.10 If broad patterns of reaction by Muslims to invasions can be observed throughout history, it should be possible to better predict how Muslims will respond should an Islamic country be invaded in the future. In order to make a first step in this direction, I first examine how Muslim VNSAs responded in what is perhaps the example par excellence of non-Islamic

4 5 6 7 8

9

10

See Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab–Byzantine Frontier (New Haven, CT, 1996). Paul L. Heck, “‘Jihad’ Revisited,” Journal of Religious Ethics 32 (2004), 95–128. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence; Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, MA, 2004), pp. 139–87. See, for example, Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal (London, 1986), passim. See, among others, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (London, 1993); Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, The Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire (London, 2008). Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (New York, 2002); M. Naeem. Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918–1924 (Leiden, 1999). Ali Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq. Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven, CT, 2007), pp. 97–131; Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory. The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York, 2005), pp. 25–36; Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation (London, 2006), pp. 67–99.

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invasion of a Muslim region, the period of the Crusades in the Middle East, c. 1097–1291, an episode that is still used, on both sides, as an analogy when referring to current issues. I shall then compare these responses to those from more modern conflicts, particularly the Iraqi insurgency, in order to see to what extent the two mirror each other, and how that can then inform us about patterns resistance, at least in general terms. Finally, I shall briefly employ models from political science to try to provide explanations for why Muslims reacted as they did during the Crusades, to make some further contribution to knowledge in that field. Methodological Problems Before examining the evidence, it will be useful to highlight two main methodological problems related to this paper. The first of these surrounds the nature of the source material. For most historical events of the modern era a vast quantity of evidence survives, in the form of government documents, letters, newspaper reports, interviews, and so on. For the medieval period the evidence is much more restricted: for Latin Europe, for example, the evidence consists primarily of chronicles, and, if the historian is lucky, letters, charters, and archaeological remains. Yet for the Islamic world in the crusading period the situation is even less favorable, as no charters or letters from this period survive, with archaeology providing, in this context at least, essentially no data. Most of the surviving sources detailing the actions of Muslim VNSAs from an Islamic perspective are a limited number of chronicles written decades or even centuries after the events they describe.11 The problem this sparsity of material poses for this paper is compounded by the fact that those who composed these texts – almost exclusively members of the religious classes and the bureaucracy – were principally concerned with the rulers of society and their peers. With the vast majority of Islamic society, those who were outside those elite circles, they were unconcerned, and so these, who constituted the main backbone of the various VNSAs that existed, come into view only when they happen to do something particularly noteworthy or out of the ordinary, or when it is possible to read between the lines of the Arabic texts.12 This Arabic-Islamic material can, however, be supplemented by material from the Latin sources, as these are not concerned about the divisions within Islamic society, and which provide some useful additional information – in fact, for the beginning of the crusading period, contemporary evidence for Muslim

11 12

For a list of these, see Carole Hillenbrand, “Sources in Arabic,” in Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, ed. Mary Whitby (Oxford, 2007), pp. 283–340. For medieval Arabic-Islamic historiography and its problems, especially related to its bias in favour of societal elites, see Medieval Muslim Historians and the Franks in the Levant, ed. Alex Mallett (Leiden, 2014); Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, 2003); Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge, 1996); Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd edition (Leiden, 1968).

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responses comes primarily from Latin Christian texts.13 Thus, there is a serious shortage of evidence for this period, and any conclusions drawn must be highlighted as being both tentative and general. The second methodological problem relates to exactly how, in the context of the medieval Middle East, it is possible define a “non-state actor.” In the modern period a number of general types have been identified, including: national liberation movements; insurgent guerrilla bands that are engaged in a protracted political and military struggle aimed at weakening or destroying the power and legitimacy of a ruling government; terrorist groups that spread fear through the use of violence; militant groups “made up of irregular but recognizable armed forces [ : : : ] operating within an ungoverned area or a weak, fragmented or failing state”; and mercenary militias.14 Yet these are all defined with reference to the modern nation-state. The concept of the “nation-state,” however, has no real meaning before the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, and in many parts of the world not for a long time after that. In the medieval Middle East, and here focusing primarily on the area of Syria under the theoretical control of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, there was no such thing as a “state,” and power was instead manifested in a person, one who held their position of authority “as the property or patrimony of a dynasty.”15 Consequently, this seemingly leads to the problem that the state was merely one person, and so everybody else, i.e. virtually the whole population, was a non-state actor. That position, however, is untenable. Both the administrative apparatus and the religious classes were primarily geared towards enforcing the ruler’s will, and thus the “state” can be said to have been something related to the individual who wielded power in a specific location, and state actors were people who had ties of some type to the ruler, such as members of the bureaucracy, or people appointed to important religious positions by the ruler, such as a city’s qād. ī (religious judge). On the other hand, there were many in society who had no direct relationships with the “state,” as they were not directly employed or given their positions by it; these included merchants, tradesmen, women, ascetics, and slaves. It becomes more difficult to define what is and is not a VNSA when the focus moves towards groups who were usually armed. In the medieval Islamic world, there were a number of these: the jaysh were made up of regular soldiers who were paid a wage no matter whether they fought or not, and were linked to the service of the ruler. Consequently, they were similar to some extent to a modern standing army, though with loyalty given to the ruler rather than the state. The same is the case with the ʿaskar. Mamlūks were technically slave-soldiers, but

13 14 15

Alex Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions to the Franks in the Levant, 1097–1291 (Farnham, 2014), pp. 8–9. Mulaj, Violent Non-State Actors, pp. 3–4. The way power was distributed at the time thus rather reflected the famous statement by Louis XIV of France that “L’état, c’est moi.” See Sami Zubaida, “The Legacy of Islam: Shariʿa, Individual Rights, and Communal Rights,” in Citizenship in the Arab World, ed. Roel Meijer and Nils A. Butenschøn (Leiden, 2016), forthcoming.

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they were paid for their military service in the form of cash and/or iqtās (the taxrights to a certain district), and this remuneration was not dependent on military service; again, their loyalty was to a ruler/master rather than any state or spatial region.16 Another term encountered in the source material is jund, which originally meant soldiers who received pay which was provided by a land-tax, but came to mean just armed forces in general, and can thus be said to encompass all the above.17 All these violent actors so far can be classified as state actors, as they were paid by and lived within the framework of a governmental system and bureaucracy based on rule by an individual. However, a number of significant actors fell outside such a classification. First there were volunteers, mut..t awiʿa, who fought alongside and sometimes in the same army as the various “professionals,” but who did so only for the duration of campaigns, received less pay, and did not have to fight unless they wished to.18 Another group was the Turkomen, nomadic Turks who had settled in regions of Anatolia, the Jazira, and the Caucasus, and who were ethnically related to the Turkish rulers of the various cities of Syria. These participated on campaigns only when they wanted to, and primarily did so to gain booty for themselves.19 Finally, there were the ghāzīs, religious frontier-warriors who lived on booty gained during campaigns, from non-war activities between them, and in pious foundations which provided them with food and lodging.20 Because these groups were outside the ruling structures, formed only informal and ephemeral alliances with governmental forces, and received no fixed income for their services, these are the groups here defined as VNSAs. Despite the limitations in the quantity of evidence, and the potential for problems resulting, there is still a significant quantity of primary material that can be brought to bear on this discussion. Actions by Muslim VNSAs during the Period of the Crusades The sources demonstrate a number of ways in which such “non-state” Muslims responded to the Frankish presence throughout the crusading period. Perhaps the clearest way in which this was manifested, at least in the case of traditionally “non-combatant” Muslims, was through their participation in resistance to Frankish sieges of Muslim-held cities. Such resistance could take a number of forms. Most obvious were those acts carried out against the besieging forces by the ordinary townspeople. For example, during the prolonged siege of the city of Antioch in 1097–98 during the First Crusade both regular and irregular forces worked together in the attempts to resist the Franks.21 Such also occurred during

16 17 18 19 20 21

Andrew C. S. Peacock, The Great Seljuk Empire (Edinburgh, 2015), pp. 225–28. Dominique Sourdel, “Djund,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. J. Bearman et al., 11 vols. (Leiden, 1954–2002), hereafter cited as EI2. Claude Cahen, “Djaysh,” in EI2. Ibid. Ibid. Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta per Francos, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1996), p. 192.

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the Frankish siege of Damascus during the Second Crusade in 1148,22 of H.amā in 1177/8,23 and of the Egyptian city of Damietta in the Fifth Crusade.24 The specific way in which such resistance could be manifested varied, but usually included firing arrows at the besiegers from inside the city, participating in sallies against the Franks outside the city and, in the case of Muslims living in the surrounding regions, attacking the Franks who were foraging in the hinterland. Yet it was not purely through such acts of physical violence that resistance to sieges was carried out by VNSAs. Individuals were also involved in the construction of weapons that could prove to be vital in the resistance, and the rebuilding of parts of the city that had been damaged by the Frankish assault. All these actions are seen very clearly during the Frankish sieges of Nicaea in 1097,25 the protracted siege of Tyre (1111–24),26 and Ascalon in 1153.27 For all these there are detailed surviving accounts from which information can be gathered, but, given that the general pattern seems to repeat itself across the period, it can be assumed that such resistance was also seen in the many other Frankish sieges during this period, for which the surviving evidence is not so plentiful. Another method by which Muslims attempted to resist the Franks was to send appeals to other parts of the Islamic world to request help in their struggle with the Franks; these calls for aid were usually sent to Muslim rulers. Such appeals are primarily seen during the first decades of the crusading period, when the Muslims were on the defensive against the Franks, and often in dire straits. The earliest such appeal that is reported comes from 1097/98, before the fall of Jerusalem, when a group of Muslims from Syria went to Baghdad to bewail what was happening in their lands.28 The people of Aleppo sent an appeal to Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqī, the ruler of Mosul, during the Frankish siege of the city in 1124–25,29 those of H.oms. sent for help to Damascus in 1102,30 and the people of Cairo asked Saladin for help in 1169.31 One of the most dramatic examples of this type of plea for assistance was that made by a group of people from Aleppo, which included merchants, Sufis, and religious scholars, to the caliph and sultan in Baghdad in 1110 in response to the ravaging of Aleppan territory by the Franks. When the help they had demanded did not seem forthcoming they invaded the sultan’s mosque, ejected

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25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Usāma b. Munqidh, Kitāb al-iʿtibār, ed. Phillip K. Hitti (Princeton, 1930), p. 95. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fi’l-taʾrīkh, ed. ʿUmar Tadmurī, 11 vols. (Beirut, 2006), 9:429–30. Al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-sulūk, ed. M. M. Ziyāda and S. A. F. ʿĀshūr, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1934–73), 1/1:206, who suggests that the townspeople were much more vigorous in their defensive efforts in the place than the professional soldiers. Guibert of Nogent, Dei gesta, p. 146. Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Leiden, 1908), p. 180. William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, 2 vols. (Turnhout, 1996), 2:799. Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaz.am fī taʾrīkh al-mulūk wa’l-umam, s.n., 6 vols. numbered 5b–10 (Hyderabad, 1938–40), 9:105. Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughyat al-t.alab min taʾrīkh H . alab, ed. Suhayl Zakkār, 12 vols. (Beirut, 1988), 4:1963–64; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 8:695–96. Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, p. 142. Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 9:339.

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the khāt. ib (leader of the prayers), destroyed the pulpit, and prevented the Friday prayers from being said. Upon their appeal here being essentially ignored, they did the same in the caliph’s mosque the following week.32 In all these examples, the people had been forced to look further afield for help as their own government had proved incapable of defending their lands against the Franks, or was seen as being about to submit to or be defeated by them.33 Another method by which VNSAs attempted to resist the Franks was by making opportunistic attacks on Frankish troops or non-combatants. These could take one of two forms. The first were attacks made against Franks who can be regarded as non-combatants, which, in the period, were primarily either merchants or pilgrims. Attacks on and killings of pilgrims are recounted in both Latin and Muslim sources. For example, at the beginning of the twelfth century the pilgrim Saewulf complained that the road from the port-city of Jaffa to Jerusalem was dangerous because the Muslims of the region were in the habit of attacking pilgrims journeying along it;34 in the 1170s the pilgrim Theodoric recounted how his party was forced into a state of fear by the Muslims in the region around Nazareth;35 and in the mid-thirteenth century the archbishop of Nicosia, Eustorge of Montaigu, wrote that many Latin pilgrims had been killed or incarcerated by the Muslims of the Levant.36 On the Muslim side, the Egyptian chronicler Ibn Muyassar records how a group of pilgrims were massacred near Tripoli in 1151,37 while in 1157 the shipwreck of a Frankish ship on the Egyptian coast led to the pilgrims on board being captured and sent to Cairo.38 Insights into the circumstances surrounding such events can be found in the recollections of Usāma b. Munqidh. He mentions that, in his home-town of Shaizar, a woman captured three Frankish pilgrims, stole their possessions, and had them killed; when a group of Franks became lost near that town they were captured by the townspeople, the men being killed and the women, children, and goods retained.39 While in Nablus, Usāma met a Muslim who had expended much time and energy in tricking Frankish pilgrims into coming into his home and then killing them.40 While it is not clear who was involved in such activities in all the examples described, the evidence from Usāma makes it fairly clear that, in at least some, it was “ordinary” Muslims who took it upon themselves to resist the Franks in this way.

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Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, p. 173. Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions, pp. 31–48. Account of Saewulf in Jerusalem Pilgrimage, ed. John Wilkinson (London, 1988), pp. 100–01. Account of Theodoric in Peregrinationes tres, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1994), p. 187. Letter of Eustorge of Montaigu to the secular rulers of Latin Europe, in Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. E. Martene and U. Durand, 5 vols. (Paris, 1717), 1:1012–13. Ibn Muyassar, Akbār Mis.r, ed. Henri Massé (Cairo, 1919), p. 91. Ibid., p. 96. Both of these examples are in Usāma, Iʿtibār, p. 129. Usāma, Iʿtibār, pp. 139–40.

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A related response was that taken by previously quiescent Muslims who were living in Frankish territory. There is evidence that they chose to rise up against the Franks when a Muslim army invaded Frankish territory. This is particularly clearly seen in the Latin writer Walter the Chancellor’s detailed description of the fighting that occurred in northern Syria in 1119, when Muslims in the territory of Antioch turned on the Franks during the invasion of the region by the army of Īl-ghāzī, the Artuqid Turkish ruler of Aleppo.41 The Muslims living in the same area acted similarly following incursions by the troops of Mawdūd, the ruler of Mosul, in 1109–10,42 while the same occurred around the same time when T.ughtegīn, the ruler of Damascus, invaded the kingdom of Jerusalem.43 Muslims voluntarily joining the armies opposed to the Franks did not have to be from the region where the fighting occurred; they could be, in the words of one author, from “all nations, peoples, and languages” of the Muslim world.44 On other occasions, it seems that more militarily organized Muslim VNSAs were active against the Franks, and particularly Frankish armies. For example, there are numerous examples of nomadic forces making raids against Frankish military forces or strongholds across the whole crusading period.45 Similarly, the significant numbers of bandits that were active in Syria during this period – and whose precise identity must remain a mystery – were also involved in attacks on Frankish forces. One particularly clear example of this is again revealed by Usāma b. Munqidh, who recounts how a group of robbers, again from Shaizar, set out against the Frankish camp that was besieging the nearby city of H.amā in an attempt to steal whatever they could from the Franks and then burn the Frankish camp.46 Although this attempt failed, it does demonstrate that loosely organized groups of Muslim bandits/robbers were willing, and did attempt, to

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Walter the Chancellor, Bella Antiochena, ed. Heinrich Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1896), p. 90. Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, p. 169. Ibid. Anonymous, De excidii Acconis, in The Fall of Acre, 1291, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 47–96, 64. This refers to the constitution of the Muslim army that captured Acre, the last Frankish town left in the Levant, in what was effectively the final act of the Crusades in that area. For example, some Turkomen attacked the Frankish town of Banyas, in the vicinity of Damascus, in 1151/52 (Ibn al-Qalānisī, Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq, p. 317); the German army of the Third Crusade was attacked in both Asia Minor and near Aleppo by various VNSAs, some of whom were nomadic Turkomen (Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, al-Nawādir al-sult.āniyya wa-l-mah.āsin al-yūsufiyya, ed. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl [Beirut, 1962] p. 123; Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. William Stubbs [London, 1864], p. 53; Ibn al-Athīr, alKāmil, 10:82); and during the Fifth Crusade the Frankish camp outside Damietta was assaulted by a group who are referred to as bandits (although, given the area, it is likely that they were Bedouin or Berbers: Oliver of Paderborn, Historia Damiatana, in Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, Späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina: Oliver, ed. Hermann Hoogeweg [Tübingen, 1894], pp. 159–280, 245). Usāma, Iʿtibār, pp. 85–86. The same writer also highlights a Muslim named al-Zamarrakal, who made a name for himself harassing and stealing horses from the Franks: Usāma, Iʿtibār, pp. 43–45.

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attack much better-organized and larger Frankish military expeditions, and caused real problems for the Frankish military forces.47 Another method by which Muslim VNSAs attempted to resist the Franks was by making financial donations for the cause. While the evidence for this, as for other methods of resistance by the various VNSAs, is scarce, a limited number of examples can be seen. For example, the Andalusī Muslim traveler Ibn Jubayr relates how two Muslim merchants from Damascus gave a part of their yearly profit to ransoming some of their co-religionists who had been taken prisoner by the Franks.48 Despite the lack of direct evidence, it seems almost certain that this would have been widespread amongst Muslims at the time.49 The final example was actions taken against local Christian populations. This seems to have occurred but rarely at first, and in the first decades of the crusading period there is only one example, and this in response to specific circumstances; during the Frankish siege of Aleppo in 1124, a Muslim mob was incited against four churches in the city, and turned them into mosques. This, however, was caused by the Frankish siege and, more specifically, by some particularly inflammatory acts perpetrated by the besieging forces against Islamic religious monuments.50 However, as Muslims began to see the conflict in more religious terms under Nūr al-Dīn and Saladin in the latter half of the twelfth century and, particularly, following the beginning of Ayyūbid rule in the 1170s, instances of actions taken against local Christians became more frequent and, often, harsher.51 Even after the Franks had left the Levant, the high level of antipathy that had been aroused against Christians in general continued to be maintained, as there were sporadic but concentrated outbursts of violence against local Christian populations, especially in Egypt, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.52 The Crusading Period and Post-2003 Iraq: A Comparison Comparing these means of resistance with those from more modern conflicts, it is clear that all these methods of resistance have been seen recently. Ordinary Iraqis, for example, played a significant part in resistance to Coalition forces

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See, for example, Ibn al-Furāt, Taʾrīkh al-duwal wa’l-mulūk, partial ed. and tr. U. Lyons and M. C. Lyons as Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1971), 1:65, who recounts that the Hospitallers had to reinforce their defences in Syria as a consequence of continual attacks by Muslim bandits. Ibn Jubayr, Rih.la, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1907), p. 308. See Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions, pp. 86–87. Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Zubdat al-h.alab min taʾrīkh H . alab, ed. Samī Dahhan, 3 vols. (Damascus, 1951–68), 2: 222–27. Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades. Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 414–19. Ibid., pp. 417–18. The Frankish presence was not the only reason for these outbursts; economic, political, and social factors also played a part. However, the memory of the Christian Frankish presence and threat to the Muslim world continued to play a factor in intensifying them, and as a result many Christians converted to Islam.

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during the sieges of the city of Falluja in 2004. This not only included the residents of that city taking up arms against the American army that attacked it, but also involved Iraqis from other areas of the country bringing aid, such as blood donations, to its residents.53 Messages to Muslims urging them to leave their homes and travel to war zones to help fight the invader have become a stock feature of Islamist propaganda in recent years, particularly by al-Qaeda and ISIS. For example, the latter, in its previous guise as the Islamic State in Iraq, was linked to an internet-based propaganda group called the Jihadi Media Support Battalion, which urged Muslims to leave their homes and go to the territory of the Islamic State in Iraq. It also developed a YouTube channel that contained question-and-answer sessions with followers, while more recently Twitter and WhatsApp have been used to urge Muslims to go to ISIS territory. While this approach utilizes new media technology, its message is one that has been around for nearly 1500 years.54 Evidence from the Iraq war shows that partnerships between VNSAs and the remnants of the old Iraqi army were often formed, particularly so between the invasion in 2003 and late 2004. For example, the leader of the “Army of Muhammad” group had been Chief of Staff in the Republican Guard. One of the major manufacturers of car bombs for the insurgents in 2003–4, Abu ʿUmar al-Kurdī, was a former member of the Iraqi Mukhabarat (secret police). This was also seen in later years, for example following the execution of Saddam Hussein, when a number of ex-Baʿathists, some of whom were members of the armed forces, took up arms against the Coalition in response to his death. It has also been widely reported that the leader of ISIS, Abū Bakr al-Baghdādī, was a former member of the Iraqi Republican Guard.55 Opportunistic attacks were made against people seen as being part of the occupying forces, such as the killing of four US military contractors in Falluja in late March 2004, whose bodies were burnt, dragged through the streets of the town, and then suspended from a bridge over the Euphrates, events which led to the first US attempt on the city that year, or the six UK soldiers killed by a mob

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Allawi, Occupation of Iraq, p. 277; Cockburn, Occupation, pp. 140–44. See Abdul Hameed Bakier, “Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq Turns to YouTube,” repr. in Reidar Visser, Volatile Landscape. Iraq and its Insurgent Movements (Washington, 2010), pp. 93–94; idem, “Islamic State of Iraq Brings Internet Propaganda to the Streets,” repr. in Visser, Volatile Landscape, pp. 120–22; Allawi, Occupation of Iraq, pp. 183–85; Faisal Irshaid, “How ISIS is Spreading its Message Online,” BBC Monitoring Online, 19 June 2014: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27912569, accessed 16 December 2015; Javier Lesaca, “Fight Against ISIS Reveals Power of Social Media,” Brookings Institute Online, 19 November 2015: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/11/19-isis-social-mediapower-lesaca, accessed 16 December 2015. Allawi, Occupation of Iraq, pp. 181–82; Abdul Hameed Bakier, “Ex-Baʾathists Turn to Naqshbandi Sufis to Legitimize Insurgency,” repr. in Visser, Volatile Landscape, pp. 107; Andrew McGregor, “The Abu Omar al-Baghdadi Tapes: Supposedly Imprisoned Iraqi Islamist Claims He Still Leads Fight Against U.S. Occupation,” repr. in Visser, Volatile Landscape, pp. 148–55.

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at Majar al-Kabīr in southern Iraq in 2003.56 Indeed, one of the main strategists of al-Qaeda, al-ʿUyayrī, who was killed by Saudi security forces in 2003, wrote that at the beginning of a guerrilla campaign it is essential that a fighter can operate independently.57 The operations of the various anti-Coalition forces in Iraq post-2003, including, currently, ISIS, have been at least partially bankrolled by wealthy and notso-wealthy Muslims, particularly in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. This merely repeats patterns that were seen in the September 11 attacks, that go even further back, at least to the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and that have been seen all over the world.58 Financial giving in Islam, whether it be in the guise of the obligatory zakāt or the more voluntary s.adaqa, has been a central tenet of Islam ever since its beginnings, and, while much of this has been donated and used for what could be called “humanitarian” purposes, a significant minority has been given specifically in order to aid the mujāhidūn in their fight against the “infidels.”59 Such was the case during the Arab Conquests of the seventh century, the campaigns of the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids against Byzantium, the Crusades, and the operations of the Anatolian ghāzī warriors of the fourteenth century. With the combination of the tradition of charitable giving and the idealization of historical examples of Muslims who fought using the donated money, it was, and is, inevitable that some Muslims, those with Islamist leanings, would, and will continue to, donate money to modern mujāhidūn, as they see it as part of their religious duty for which they will be rewarded in the afterlife. Finally, there have been numerous examples of Muslim VNSAs taking action against local Christian populations as part of their struggles against occupying forces. These have included bombings of churches in Baghdad on 1 August 2004, 16 October 2004, 29 January 2006, 6 January 2008, 12 July 2009, as well as 45 churches being destroyed, closed, or turned into mosques or jihadi bases in the period 10 June to 29 July 2014.60

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For the events at Falluja, see Allawi, Occupation of Iraq, pp. 275–78; Diamond, Squandered Victory, p. 229; Cockburn, Occupation, p. 140; for Majar al-Kabīr, see North, Ministry of Defeat, pp. 25–27. There are dozens of other examples of such attacks scattered throughout the various analyses of the Iraq War. Erich Marquadt, “Jihadi Website Advises Mujahideen on Equipment to Bring to Iraq,” repr. in Visser, Volatile Landscape, pp. 85–87. J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Alms for Jihad. Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (Cambridge, 2006); Abdul Hameed Bakier, “Jihadis Debate Methods of Financing the Mujahideen Network in Iraq,” repr. in Visser, Volatile Landscape, pp. 292–94. For charity and financial donation in Islam, see Aron Zysow, “Zakāt,” in EI2; Thomas H. Wier (Aron Zysow), “S.adak.a,” in EI2; Amy Singer, Charity in Islamic Society (Cambridge, 2003); Adam Sabra, Poverty and Charity in Medieval Islam (Cambridge, 2000). “Church Bombings in Iraq since 2004,” Assyrian International News Agency, first posted 7 January 2008, updated since: http://www.aina.org/news/20080107163014.htm, accessed 16 December 2015. See also McGregor, “The Abu Omar al-Baghdadi Tapes.”

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Evidence for Resistance by Muslim VNSAs during the Crusades: The Use of Models from Political Science I would now like to move on to an examination of what can be inferred from modern political science models of VNSAs as to why Muslim VNSAs reacted to the Franks as they did during the crusading period. Direct evidence for the precise motives for their resistance does not exist, for the reasons alluded to earlier, but, using such models, two main aspects can be highlighted: what the methods employed by VNSAs show about the situation in the Islamic world during the Crusades, and what the bases for these methods of resistance were. In the light of the first of these two aspects, as VNSAs generally “conduct their activities in the context of state weakness, failure or fragmentation,”61 it may be posited that those who resisted the Franks must have seen their political overlords as too weak to protect them. It has indeed become axiomatic that during the first decades of the crusading period the various polities of the Muslim Near East were fragmented and thus extremely weak:62 this is also the period when VNSAs seem to have been most active in the struggle against the Franks. Certainly when one looks to the time when the Muslims were unified under a strong, central government, the role of VNSAs seems to have been dramatically reduced.63 VNSAs are usually involved in asymmetrical, or non-traditional, warfare (i.e., warfare that does not involve two standing armies facing each other on the battlefield). To achieve this, they employ tactics that accentuate their own strength while proving difficult for their more powerful opponents to counter, making clever use of space, and by deciding where and when to fight.64 Such is reflected in tactics employed by the Muslims who resisted the Franks through assaults on pilgrims, the destruction of crops, or making raids against villages under Frankish rule, and this is particularly seen in the raids made by Turkoman forces on Frankish territory. In these situations, as in modern conflicts, these VNSAs must have known that they could not have won in any open battle between the two sides, and so had to resort, often rather successfully, to such tactics. Another primary concern of VNSAs may be to simply ensure the continuation of the conflict, possibly so that it runs over many decades, until their opponent becomes ground down, or their allies are able to take the fight to the opponent.65 Again, during the Crusades, VNSAs were the main initiators of resistance to the Franks in the early period, engaging in various forms of resistance over a number of decades, after which time there was a shift to more “state”-based resistance

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Mulaj, “Introduction,” p. 2. Hillenbrand, Crusades, 31–116, passim; Paul M. Cobb, The Race for Paradise (Oxford, 2014), pp. 84–94. See Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions, passim. Mulaj, “Introduction,” pp. 19–20. Ibid.

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movements under Zengī, Nūr al-Dīn, and Saladin, as mentioned above. Such an approach is most clearly seen during the sieges of Muslim towns by Frankish forces. For example, during the siege of Aleppo in 1124–25 the townspeople continued to resist the Franks, despite the dreadful conditions they were suffering from, in order to keep the conflict going until help could arrive. This it did, in the form of Aq Sunqur al-Bursuqī, the ruler of Mosul, who brought an army to Syria, chased away the Franks, and was invited to take over Aleppo himself.66 At other times, however, when no help was forthcoming, VNSAs seem to have fought as long as they could, before giving up and surrendering the city to the Franks.67 The second issue surrounds what the bases for such actions by VNSAs were. Political science models suggest that they can be seen as responses to state policies or reflections of a state’s efforts to co-opt VNSAs, or actors who will go on to form VNSAs, into its policies. This is particularly the case when brutal or indiscriminate actions by governments drive people towards participation in or sympathy for VNSAs.68 This can be seen to have been the case in one specific example from the 1160s, when a group of Muslims in the Frankish-controlled region of Nablus voluntarily left their homes for Muslim territory as a result of their treatment by the Frankish lord of Nablus, and, it seems, became involved in the armed struggle with the Franks from there.69 Thus, it seems likely that at least some of the attacks by Muslim VNSAs in or near Frankish territory were the direct result of Frankish policies. Far from being passive observers in the events of the period as they may generally appear to have been from their lack of a voice in the sources, the ordinary people who made up VNSAs were politically active and played a significant part in how the conflict developed, as much as and in a manner in which they were able to. VNSAs also aim to provide their communities with order and security, often operating in areas in crisis where the central authority is incapable of delivering security, among many other things.70 The actors from the crusading period were certainly aiming to provide such for their community, as they attempted to prevent the Franks from invading, or to defend their religion against that of the enemy. The weakness of many Muslim governmental structures at this time – particularly that of Aleppo in northern Syria, which was an area in which VNSAs were very active – meant that there was a lack of state-based security for the Muslims in the area, and VNSAs moved in to fill that gap. I would like to sum up by highlighting Klejda Mulaj’s comment that using war is a natural policy instrument of VNSAs as they seek to meet their aims. Such objectives may include gaining political power; reversing perceived injustices; carrying on a “warrior culture”; gaining materially; or getting religious or 66 67 68 69 70

Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bughya, 4: 1963–67. See Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions, pp. 121–28. Mulaj, “Introduction,” pp. 6 and 13. See Daniella Talmon-Heller, “Arabic Sources on Muslim Villagers under Frankish Rule,” in From Clermont to Jerusalem, ed. Alan V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 103–18, 115–16. Mulaj, “Introduction,” p. 7.

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spiritual benefits.71 All of these seem to have been present at times during the Crusades, as has been highlighted: some Muslims, such as those who captured fortresses, were attempting to gain political power; the Frankish invasion was perceived as an injustice that needed to be reversed; a “warrior culture” was embedded in the minds of the Turkoman nomads who fought the Franks; the same actors certainly had material gain in the forefront of their minds; and many who fought did so with the knowledge that death in battle would mean they went straight to Paradise as a martyr. Thus, it seems that models from political science can help to explain some aspects of how Muslims responded to the Frankish invasion. However, they are useful only up to a point. For, despite these general assessments, ultimately the lack of enough source material is too great a problem to allow modern scholars to go into anything more than general theories on this point. Furthermore, as each conflict is unique, each VNSA operates differently and, as the theater of operations of the Crusades was significant both geographically and temporally, we can provide no more than general, rather than specific, comments on the reasons for VNSA activity.72 Conclusion Two main points can be highlighted from this article. The first of these is how models from social sciences can help in furthering understanding of the motives for the various methods of resistance seen by Muslim VNSAs during the crusading period. Specifically, these models allow a number of conclusions to be reached. Firstly, the fact that VNSAs took a leading role in the struggle with the Franks suggests that there was a clear imbalance of power between the Franks and the Muslims, and particularly so during the first thirty years, when VNSAs were at their most active: an asymmetry of power and resources – reflected in the comparatively easy nature of the Frankish victories of the First Crusade, at least after Antioch – that naturally led to asymmetry in methods of resistance. Secondly, it must have appeared to the Muslims of the time, especially the common people who constituted the VNSAs, that they were facing an existential threat. While precisely how they viewed that threat is unclear, due to a lack of comments in the source material, it must have involved the fear and belief that their lives would have been unrecognizably and completely altered by the presence of the Franks. Finally, the people must have regarded their probability of success in their struggles with the Franks as high; otherwise there would have been no rationale to participating. Of course, this does not necessarily mean success in worldly terms – for the pious Muslim, success would also have included dying in battle, and thereby going straight to Paradise.

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Mulaj, “Introduction,” p. 11. See ibid., p. 21.

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The second main aspect to highlight is that the various responses to the Franks from Muslim VNSAs during the crusading period reflect reactions seen in more recent conflicts. Such a conclusion is not, perhaps, surprising. For the periodization developed in the West is not matched by other regions of the world, and in the Islamic world the main temporal split is simply pre-Islamic and post-Islamic. As such, it is not surprising that medieval phenomena of resistance are also seen in the modern era. Furthermore, the idea of the nation-state on which ideas of VNSAs are based does not really apply to the Islamic world; this is, again, a Western invention projected onto the Islamic world, and particularly the Arab world, in the early twentieth century. Instead, the main conceptual category used by Muslims is the umma, the worldwide Islamic community, as it has been throughout the history of Islam; it is often on this basis that Muslims act, and this provides an explanation for why so many Muslims from all over the world become involved in resistance movements. This suggests a general pattern surrounding both the means of and reasons for Islamic resistance, and it will be useful to conduct wider studies, both geographically and temporally, to see the extent to which they are manifested at other times and spaces. If it can be shown that such methods are seen elsewhere, it will naturally lead to a further question: if these general patterns of resistance are seen across the Muslim world throughout history, to what extent are they responses specific to Islamic contexts and/or societies, and how far are they simply human reactions, dressed in an Islamic garb?

9 “New Wars” and Medieval Warfare: Some Terminological Considerations Jochen G. Schenk

Academics and policy makers concerned with the shifting nature of conflicts in the post-modern era have coined the term “new war” as a way of conceptualizing the move away from regular armed forces involved in conventional warfare to the more or less openly sponsored and overtly condoned use of “irregular” thirdparty actors, including professional mercenaries, warlords, criminal gangs and ideologically motivated volunteer fighters, a shift that seems to have gone hand in hand with a general loss of restraint on how warfare is conducted that has resulted in an increase of atrocities committed against non-combatants and cultural objects, which are frequently described as “medieval.”1 Apart from being dominated by a variety of different fighting groups alongside (and often independent from) the regular army, these “new wars” also generate new and decentralized war economies which, according to Mary Kaldor, “are heavily dependent on external resources and customarily rely on revenue generation by criminal means through blackmail, extortion, plundering and the illegal traffic in arms, drugs and humans, all of which are sustained through continued violence.”2 As a result, the “distinction between war (usually defined as violence between states or organized political groups for political motives), organized crime (violence undertaken by privately organized groups for private purposes, usually financial gain) and large-scale violations of human rights (violence undertaken by states or politically organized groups against individuals)” has become increasingly blurred.3 In all of this the “new wars” distinguish themselves from the state-centered, high-intensity “old wars,” which were fought by armies consisting of “vertically organized hierarchical units” and fueled by “centralized, totalizing and autarchic” economies.4 How “new” these “new wars” are has now become a matter of some debate. Mary Kaldor, in the third edition of her influential New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era, argues that as a new type of organized violence “new wars” developed in Africa and Eastern Europe during the last decades of the

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Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford, CA, 1999; repr. with an afterword 2001), p. 9. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., pp. 9, 11.

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twentieth century, but she also acknowledges that “many of the critics point out, rightly, that the wars of the early modern period were similar to ‘new wars’ before states became as strong as they are today.”5 The primary goal of this paper is to encourage a discussion about the use of the study of pre-modern (and especially medieval) warfare for understanding “new wars” and the terminological problems pre-modern historians might encounter when engaging in the business of trading comparisons with their modern colleagues across the Westphalian divide. In particular I will concentrate on the problem of dealing with “irregulars” within transcultural contexts, before asking the more fundamental question of whether the modern concepts of “regular” and “irregular” or “conventional” and “unconventional” warfare are suitable for the study of medieval transcultural warfare. The argument why the history of medieval warfare should prove to be fertile ground for a study of military actors, tactics and conduct that fit the modern understanding of “irregular” or “unconventional” warfare seems, on first glance, quite straightforward. If the term “irregular” is understood to describe military elements “forming part of the armed forces of a party to an armed conflict, international or non-international, but not belonging to that party’s regular forces and operating in or outside of their own territory even if the territory is under occupation,”6 and the term “unconventional” can be applied to “a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source,”7 then examples from the medieval period fitting these descriptions are not hard to find. The violent resistance of Muslim populations against Frankish occupation in the Levant throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, although sporadic, bore many “unconventional” characteristics, especially if it was supported or encouraged by Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul or Cairo. The same goes for the strategies of warfare employed by the Irish, Welsh and Scots against the English throughout most of the Middle Ages, or by Byzantine border forces along the Islamic–Byzantine frontier across the Taurus and AntiTaurus Mountains in the tenth century.8 There was no shortage of mercenaries – irregular fighters par excellence – in medieval armies; and religiously motivated

5 6

7 8

Ibid., p. x. Political Geography Glossary, http://www.umsl.edu/~naumannj/geog%202001%20glossaries/ political%20geographyh/POLITICALL%20GEOGRAPHY%20GLOSSARY.doc [accessed 17 January 2016]. For what follows see also Robert C. Piddock, “The Need for Conventional Warfare as the US Military Addresses the Environment and Threat of the 21st Century”, MA dissertation (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University, 2009), p. 3. Joint Publication 1-02: Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, p. 547. Lucas McMahon, “The Past and Future of De velitatione bellica and Byzantine Guerrilla Warfare” (MA dissertation, Central European University, 2015).

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volunteer fighters were a common feature, especially from at least the eleventh century onwards, and of Islamic warfare long before that. Volunteer jihadists played a role in Islamic warfare at the time of the crusades,9 while Christian holy warriors travelling alone or in groups attached themselves to armies fighting on behalf of Christendom in Spain, the Levant and the Baltic. Werner Paravicini has shown that scores of German, French and English volunteers of knightly and noble stock traveled considerable distances at high personal costs to join the Teutonic Order in Prussia on one or more of its bi-annual raiding campaigns against pagan Lithuanians, orthodox Russians and Mongols.10 These Preussenreisen were crusading in its most ritualized form. Trapped in chivalric pomp and supported by a large corpus of propaganda literature, much of it published by the Teutonic Order itself, it became for a while an integral part of the cultural identity of aristocratic families in Germany, England and France.11 And as with crusading in previous centuries, some families – the counts of Namur and the earls of Warwick being two examples – developed veritable traditions of Preussenreisen.12 During campaign the volunteers were subject to the overall control of the marshal of the Order. They were not integrated into the Order’s banners, however, but formed independent fighting units with their own banners, cris de guerre and internal command structures. Guest knights traveled under their own banners if they were important enough or under banners especially dedicated to them by the Teutonic Order, usually those of St George and the Virgin Mary, both of whom were closely associated with the crusades and thus would have reminded the knights fighting under them of the religious nature of their mission.13 Volunteer fighters across the centuries joined campaigns for a combination of different reasons. It is by now a well-established fact, for example, that many French knights who ventured into Spain from the tenth century onwards to join battle against Muslims were chiefly motivated by the prospect of easy plunder. But this did not rule out a strong religious incentive, especially after the First Crusade had set the paradigm for a new kind of holy war. In the case of the Preussenreisen, the primary motivator was social prestige, not material gain. The Teutonic Order bestowed social recognition on those volunteers by hosting elaborate banquets at which the twelve most valiant knights were invited to sit at the Ehrentafel (or Honors Table) and by allowing departing crusaders to display their coats of arms in the cathedral of Königsberg. 9

10 11

12 13

See generally Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 89–250, and Alex Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions to the Franks in the Levant, 1097–1291 (Farnham, 2014), passim. Werner Paravicini, Die Preußenreisen des europäischen Adels, 2 vols. (Sigmaringen, 1989/ 1995). Karol Polejowski, “The Teutonic Order’s Propaganda in France during the Wars against Poland and Lithuania (Fifteenth Century),” in Die geistlichen Ritterorden in Mitteleuropa. Mittelalter, ed. Karl Borchardt and Libor Jan (Brno, 2011), pp. 233–42. Timothy Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade. The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2013), p. 76. Paravicini, Preußenreisen, 2:137–51.

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Unlike the knights who traveled to the Baltic, however, not everyone who joined a crusading expedition or somehow ended up in one of the overseas crusading theatres was an experienced fighter and an asset to the army. The Holy Land crusades in particular had produced their fair number of popular movements, enticing large numbers of people usually considered unfit to fight to embark for Jerusalem. Most of them never made it very far. Like the knights fighting in the Teutonic Order’s Baltic campaigns, most volunteers who did arrive at their intended destinations equipped and ready for battle were either mercenaries or knights (and often both) who were, by virtue of upbringing or profession, already trained in arms. Unlike most jihadists of modern times, they did not become warriors for the purpose of holy war; rather, they were warriors who directed their profession to a new cause. The problem with using medieval examples such as these to argue that “irregular” forces and “unconventional” warfare always had a role to play in military conflicts is that it requires one to presuppose that structures, groups and tactics which by the same standard are considered “regular” and “conventional” also existed in the pre-modern era, and that these were recognizable across national and cultural borders. And yet it remains very unclear where and how the distinction should be drawn between what we recognize as “irregular” or “unconventional” in the modern sense of these words and what pre-modern generals, tacticians and moralists would have recognized as “regular” or “conventional.” “Regular armed forces” as implied by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and recognized by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 have in common that they are (a) “being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates,” (b) “having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance,” (c) “carrying arms openly and (d) “conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”14 “Irregular forces” do not satisfy these criteria. In connection with warfare the definition of “regular” is closely tied to that of “conventional.” The Political Geography Glossary defines “conventional conflict” as “armed conflict between states and/or nations in which combatants appear in organized military units that are often outfitted with standard uniforms, weapons, and equipment. It typically involves major combat operations that overtly seize control of territory, inhabitants, and resources.”15 The goal of conventional warfare is “the capture of territory by military means,” which usually involves battles.16 In contrast, “unconventional warfare” is understood as “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground,

14

15 16

Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War 12 August 1949, Art. 4:2 [https://www.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/375]. For commentary see Major Geoffrey S. Corn and Major Michael L. Smidt, “‘To Be or Not To Be, That Is the Question’: Contemporary Military Operations and the Status of Captured Personnel,” The Army Lawyer no. 319 (1999). Political Geography Glossary, s.v. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 9.

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auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area” (Joint-Publication 1-02),17 or, more elaborately, as “a broad spectrum of military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted through, with, or by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes, but is not limited to, guerrilla warfare, subversion, sabotage, intelligence activities, and unconventional assisted recovery” (Joint Publication 3-03).18 “Unconventional warfare” avoids battles and the massive concentration of military force they necessitate. Instead it often aims at gaining political control over populations, sometimes by capturing “hearts and minds,” sometimes (and in recent times increasingly often) through “fear and hatred.”19 Its close relationship to “irregular warfare” is drawn out further in A Tentative Manual For Countering Irregular Threats: An Updated Approach to Counterinsurgency, produced by the United States Marine Corps Combat Development Command, where it is stated that “the term irregular is used in the broad, inclusive sense to refer to all types of non-conventional methods of violence employed to counter the traditional capabilities of an opponent.”20 “Irregular warfare,” according to the same manual, “includes both state and non-state participants who desire to drive out or lessen the authority of local or outside governments.”21 Both “unconventional” and “irregular” warfare are main characteristics of post-modern “new wars” insofar as they constitute a break with the Clausewitzian paradigm.22 For historians concerned with the military conduct of pre-modern societies, however, these forms of warfare as well as their protagonists can seem very ancient indeed. As already indicated, the problem with the definitions currently applied to classify warfare across the ages is that they build on the Clausewitzian paradigm of conflicts between clearly identifiable states and nations,23 which, as Martin van Creveld has pointed out, is a useful framework for understanding one kind of war, but not war in its totality.24 The paradigm certainly poses problems to historians working on periods and cultures in which nation-states had not yet fully emerged, where standing armies were a rarity rather than the norm, or where the default mode for organized violence even in the presence of the state simply followed very different rules. This raises the question what the terms “regular” and “irregular” could and should mean in these contexts. The most

17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24

Joint Publication 1-02, p. 253; Joint Publication 3-05: Special Operations (Washington, DC, 2014), p. xi [http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp3_05.pdf]. Joint Publication 1-02, p. 547. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 9. Marine Corps Combat Development Command, A Tentative Manual for Countering Irregular Threats: An Updated Approach to Counterinsurgency (Quantico, VA, 2006), p. 1 [https://fas.org/irp/doddir/usmc/manual.pdf]. A Tentative Manual for Countering Irregular Threats, p. 7. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 9 Ibid., p. 15. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, 1991), p. 58.

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common approach seems to be to test all warfare, past and present, against a modern (Western) paradigm of “regularity” and to label as “irregular” what does not fit. That is of as little help to pre-modern historians as it is to modern historians, sociologists and political scientists engaged in explaining the validity, even predominance, of alternative military cultures across time and space.25 For a medieval historian, for example, it is impossible to conclude with certainty whether the fighting convents of the military orders should be labeled “irregular” because they recruited internationally and acted independently from secular oversight and control, or whether they should be regarded as “regular” because they presented the most regulated standing armies in the crusader states, whose members wore clearly identifiable uniforms and wore their weapons openly. Both explanations would seem to have merit; neither is fully convincing. One way of approaching a solution to the problem of having to apply post-Clausewitzian concepts to pre-modern warfare is by singling out the norms which define warfare within a particular cultural system (e.g. Latin Christendom) and to call the style of warfare that adheres to them most closely “conventional” or “regular.” This, however, would also mean acknowledging that regular and conventional warfare differed between cultures and that within each larger system multiple sub-systems existed, thus necessitating a large degree of adaptation whenever these larger or smaller systems collided. Having thus entered the realm of transcultural warfare, we are immediately confronted with the additional set of problems – lucidly laid out by Stephen Morillo in his attempt at a general typology of transcultural war – of establishing “a working notion of what we mean by culture and how cultural boundaries can affect the conduct of war.” After all, “[i]f we are strict enough about what counts as a unitary culture, all wars will count as transcultural, which would make a typology of them pointless.”26 Morillo pragmatically distinguishes between “Big Cultures” and “Subcultures,” with the latter forming component segments of the former while potentially containing their own subcultures within themselves.27 Whereas intracultural warfare (at any level) “is characterized by mutual comprehension”28 and shared norms and conventions, warfare between cultures was “characterized by mutual incomprehension,” i.e. a “failing to comprehend the goals, motivations

25

26

27 28

See van Creveld, Transformation, p. 58: “The news that present-day armed violence does not distinguish between governments, armies, and peoples will scarcely surprise the inhabitants of Ethiopia, the Spanish Sahara, or [ : : : ] those of Northern Ireland [ : : : ]. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that developing countries, the locus classicus of nontrinitarian war, have as their populations approximately four fifths of all people living on this planet. If anybody should be startled at all, it is the citizens of the developed world and, even more, the members of their defence establishments who for decades on end have prepared for the wrong kind of war.” Stephen Morillo, “A General Typology of Transcultural Wars – The Early Middle Ages and Beyond,” in Transcultural Wars from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century, ed. Hans-Henning Kortüm (Berlin, 2006), pp. 29–42, at p. 29. Ibid., pp. 29–30. Ibid., p. 31.

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and methods of [the] enemy.”29 It is by necessity the latter kind of warfare that, over time, fostered the highest degree of military adaptation and “unconventional” military thinking between two culturally dissimilar opposing parties. As already suggested by the examples of “irregular” and “unconventional” (in the post-Clausewitzian sense) forms and protagonists of medieval warfare cited at the beginning of this paper, we can witness this adaptation most clearly at the fringes of larger systems (Morillo’s “Big Cultures”), such as Western Christendom’s frontiers with Islam in Spain and the Latin East, or at the borders of Anglo-Norman England with the Celtic world. Warfare within these frontier regions was characterized by a considerable degree of mutual assimilation of tactics, including the development of new units adapted to local conditions and the employment of foreign fighters familiar with the enemy’s military culture. In the tenth century, efforts were being made by the Byzantine military to codify instructions for soldiers stationed along the empire’s frontier with the Bulgars on how to use guerrilla tactics in mountainous terrain.30 In Iberia, local conditions produced the Almogavars (Spanish almogáveres), a socially homogenous and culturally distinctive group of low-class frontiersmen with a fierce reputation for banditry and a highly aggressive guerrilla fighting style.31 On the Celtic fringe, the English deployed hobelars, a new class of light cavalry, against the Scots in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the early fourteenth century and possibly before against the Welsh and Irish. And in the Latin East, the Franks used turcopoles and indigenous troops as skirmishers or spies.

29 30

31

Ibid., p. 34. Pseudo-Nikephoros II Phokas, “On Skirmishing,” Three Byzantine Military Treatises, ed. and tr. George T. Dennis (Washington, DC, 1985); McMahon, “The Past and Future of De velitatione bellica.” A good description of the Almogavars can be found in Bernard Descot, Crónica del Rey en Pere e dels seus antecessors passats, ed. Joseph Coroleu (Barcelona, 1885) at pp. 148–49: “Aquestes gents qui han nom Almugavers son gents que no viven sino de fet de armes, ne no stan en viles ne en ciutats, sino en muntanyes e en boschs; e guerreien tots jorns ab Serrayns, e entren dins la terra dels Serrayns huna jornada o dues lladrunyant e prenent dels Serrayns molts, e de llur haver; e de aço viven; e sofferen moltes malenances que als altres homens no porien sostenir; que be passaran a vegades dos jorns sens menjar, si mester los es; e menjaran de les erbes dels camps, que sol no s’en prehen res. E los Adelits quels guien, saben les terres els camins. E no aporten mes de huna gonella o huna camisa, sia stiu o ivern; e en les cames porten hunes calses de cuyro, e als peus hunes avarques de cuyro. E porten bon coltell e bona correja, e hun fogur a la cinta. E porta cascu huna llança e dos darts, e hun cerro de cuyro en que aporten llur vianda. E son molt forts e molt laugers per fugir e per encalsar. E son Catalans e Aragonesos e Serrayns. E aquelles altres gents que hom apella Golfins son Castellans e Salagons, e gents de profunda Spanya; e son la major partida de paratge. E per ço com no han rendes, o u han degastat e jugat, o per alguna mala feyta, fugen de llur terra ab llurs armes. E axi com a homens que no saben altre fer, vehent se en la frontera dels ports del Muradal, qui son grans montanyes e forts, e grans boscatges, e marquen ab la terra dels Serrayns e dels crestians, e quens passa lo cami qui va de Castella a Cordova e a Sivilia, e axi aquelles gents prenen crestians e Serrayns; e estan en aquells boscatges; e aqui viven; e son molt grans gents e bones d'armes, tant quel rey de Castella non pot venir a fi.”

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The twelfth-century English chronicler Gerald of Wales, for one, was clearly aware of the necessity of adaptation in transcultural warfare. If the AngloNormans ever wanted to conquer Wales and Ireland, he believed, then they had to begin fighting like the Welsh and Irish or start relying on men who did; because the problem as he saw it was that whereas the Anglo-Normans took pride in their heavily armed knights whom they sought to employ in open battle, the Irish and Welsh relied on raids, ambushes and swift hit-and-run attacks, the mainstay, in short, of tribal warfare.32 Thus, It is an old saying, that every man is most to be believed in respect of his own art; and so, as regards this expedition, their judgement may be best relied on, who have been longest conversant with the similar state of affairs in the country, and are most acquainted with the manners and customs of the people : : : In all expeditions, therefore, either in Ireland or in Wales, the Welshmen bred in the marches, and accustomed to the continual wars in those parts, make the best troops. They are very brave, and, from their previous habits, bold and active : : : Such men and soldiers were they which took the lead in the conquest of Ireland, and by such men it must be finally and completely effected. Let each class of soldiers have its proper place. Against heavy-armed troops, depending on their strength and complete armour, and fighting on a plain, you must oppose, I admit, men equal to them in the weight of their armour and strength of limb; but when you have to do with a race who are naturally agile and light of foot, and whose haunts are in steep and rocky places, you want light-armoured troops, and especially such as have been trained by experience to fighting under such circumstances.33

Gerald’s description demonstrates awareness that between the English and the Celts there existed different fighting styles, which were culturally determined, shaped by geography and surely considered “conventional” and “regular” within their respective cultural contexts. Similar realizations are echoed by Latin chroniclers and eyewitnesses of crusaders’ encounters with Turks, Bedouins and Saracens, and likewise by Arabic writers in their reports on Muslim encounters with Latin armies. We must acknowledge these points of view, which merely reconfirm that different cultural systems produced different military norms, which within their own cultural contexts determined what constituted “regular” or “conventional” warfare. It would have been only after adaptation across cultural borders had occurred that labels of “irregularity” and “unconventionality” rightfully applied.

32

33

Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1996), p. 6. On tribal warfare, see e.g. Keith F. Otterbein, How War Began (College Station, TX, 2004), pp. 199–202. See also Ruben M. Mendoza, “Tribal Warfare,” in Magill's Guide to Military History, ed. John Powell (Pasadena, 2001), pp. 1559–61. Giraldus Cambrensis, The Conquest of Ireland, tr. Thomas Forester. Revised and edited with additional notes by Thomas Wright (Cambridge, Ontario, 2001), chapter xxxvi, p. 81.

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“Irregular” Forces in Transcultural Contexts The problem of categorizing the military actors involved in transcultural warfare is closely linked to that of categorizing warfare, but deserves special treatment. Over the last decade excellent research has emerged on the use and importance of mercenaries and other “paid men” in pre-modern warfare.34 As a result, mercenaries are now the most frequently mentioned category of “irregular forces” recognized to have existed in the Middle Ages. However, as Kelly DeVries has pointed out, exactly what determined whether a fighter receiving payment for services rendered should be labeled as a mercenary or as a regular soldier receiving payment is still a matter of debate.35 Sarah Percy has illustrated the wide spectrum of private violence that existed in the Middle Ages, thus showing that the scale from purely mercenary violence to ideologically determined violence was a sliding one that allowed for various combinations of motivations and degrees of legitimate oversight and therefore for considerable movement even by individual actors.36 Mercenaries fighting solely for profit occupied the lower end of the spectrum; they were the vagabond soldiers-for-hire known across France as routiers or coteraux, who followed no cause other than that of individual gain and who developed into a real menace from the twelfth century onwards, causing Pope Alexander III in 1179 to announce their excommunication, thus manifesting their “irregular” status according to the military conventions of Latin Christendom. At the same end of the spectrum we also find the more or less loosely organized associations of mercenaries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries called the Free or Great Companies. One example is the Catalan Company, which had been formed by the renegade Templar and pirate Roger de Flor after the Peace of Caltabellota on 31 August 1302, which ended the twenty-year-long conflict between the Aragonese kings of Sicily and the Angevin kings of Naples and left large numbers of mercenaries and veteran soldiers stranded in the Eastern Mediterranean. First unleashed on Asia Minor in 1304 by the Greek Emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus to fight the Turks in Anatolia, the company – which included, apart from Catalan and Aragonese soldiers, Italians, Sicilians, Franks, Greeks and, later, Turks and turcopoles – eventually went rogue. Wreaking general havoc across Macedonia and Thrace, it quickly developed into one of the main destabilizing forces in mainland Greece. In 1311 the Company succeeded in

34 35 36

Pars pro toto: Mercenaries and Paid Men. The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. John France (Leiden, 2008). See Kelly DeVries, “Medieval Mercenaries. Methodology, Definitions, and Problems,” in Mercenaries and Paid Men, pp. 43–60. Sarah Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations (Oxford, 2007). Although John R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe 1450–1620 (Stroud, 1998), pp. 146–47 argues that “except for the gentlemen volunteers, because all soldiers fought for pay, it was not receipt of a wage that made a man a ‘mercenary’, or indifference to the faith or cause he served in arms, but the size of the unit that comprised him (commonly between 600 and 4000) and his dependence not on a political authority but on a contractor who had negotiated his own bargain with government.”

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capturing the duchy of Athens from Walter of Brienne, which the company held until 1379, and in 1319 it created the duchy of Neopatras, to be held in the name of the Aragonese Crown.37 However, the differences between these and other types of military entrepreneurs are gradual and not always easy to determine, especially once the importance of non-monetary motives for fighting are also acknowledged. As Ciarán Óg O’Reilly has shown, Irish mercenaries were ubiquitous in seventeenth-century continental European armies, for example, but upon closer inspection seem to have served only Catholic powers, which strongly suggests that their business decisions were driven by religious sentiment.38 This prompted John France to ask whether it was “proper to call somebody who is ideologically motivated a mercenary” in the first place.39 Again, the problem of finding appropriate labels for individuals whose motivations transcended those determined by scholars for the purpose of easy classification is further exacerbated if the individuals’ involvement in military action transcended cultural boundaries, as was the case, for example, with the band of Berber warriors called jenets who by the 1280s were serving the kings of Aragon as skirmishing troops along and across the kingdom’s border. These were hired soldiers, and for all intents and purposes they functioned as yet another mercenary element in the kings of Aragon’s military toolbox. However, as Hussein Fancy has demonstrated, far from being secular-minded soldiers of fortune, these recruits belonged in fact to a religiously highly motivated group of Muslim Berbers known as “the Holy Warriors” (al-Ghuzāh al-Mujāhidūn), who, robbed of opportunities to exercise holy war against Christians under the banner of a Muslim ruler, had agreed to fight against Christians on behalf of a Christian ruler instead. Their contracts stated clearly that they would be employed only against Christians and the records show that they were furious when asked to raise their weapons against Muslims, which has led Fancy to conclude “that these men may not have seen themselves as mercenaries, as historians have taken them to be, or as slaves and bare life, as the Aragonese kings imagined them, but rather as holy warriors, invoking their own claims to and about divinely sanctioned law and violence.”40 In short, as well as serving as manifestation of the Aragonese kings’ authority to employ Muslim proxies in their wars against Christian neighbors, the jenets, by fighting for a Christian 37

38

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On the Catalan Company see David Jacoby, “The Catalan Company in the East: The Evolution of an Itinerant Army (1303–1311),” in The Medieval Way of War. Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach, ed. Gregory I. Halfond (Farnham, 2015), pp. 153–82; Kenneth M. Setton, Catalan Domination of Athens, 1311–1388 (Cambridge, MA, 1948); idem, Los Catalanes en Grecia (Barcelona, 1975); Els Catalans a la Mediterrània oriental a l’edat mitjana, ed. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona, 2003). Ciarán Óg O’Reilly, “The Irish Mercenary Tradition in the 1600s,” in Mercenaries and Paid Men, pp. 383–93, and John France, “Mercenaries and Paid Men. The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages: Introduction,” in Mercenaries and Paid Men, pp. 1–13, at p. 10. France, “Mercenaries and Paid Men: Introduction,” p. 10. Hussein Fancy, “Theologies of Violence: The Recruitment of Muslim Soldiers by the Crown of Aragon,” Past & Present 221 (2013), 39–73, quotation at p. 66.

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ruler, were also advancing their own agenda of holy war, which from their perspective defined them first and foremost. They are, therefore, a prime example of the multilateral cost-benefit relationships between proxies and their “masters” which must have been commonplace in all kinds of transcultural engagements but are too easily overlooked if examined from a mono-cultural (Western) perspective. A second example that helps to illustrate this point is that of the military role and status of the Bedouins in the Latin East. Both Latin and Arabic sources for the history of the crusader states are rich with references to Bedouins aiding or obstructing the military endeavors of Muslim and Frankish armies. Bedouins were generally recognized as a source of trouble and much of the lawlessness that plagued the parts of the Kingdom of Jerusalem bordering modern-day Jordan and Egypt was attributed to them and other nomad populations. For Western observers such elements had no role to play in a civilized society that prided itself on having overcome the primitive stage of pastoralism and created cities, towns and governments instead. Just like the pastoral societies on the fringes of Christendom,41 the Bedouins were regarded as wild men.42 In a sedentary society like that of the Franks in the Latin East, where jurisdictions and legal relationships were geographically defined, nomadic lifestyles indicated backwardness, non-compliance with societal rules and, by extension, lawlessness. Bedouins were frequently described as rash, reckless, disloyal to anyone but their own tribe and treacherous. They were also regarded by Muslim and Latin rulers alike as potentially destabilizing elements, for their peripatetic lifestyle caused them to ignore political borders, which made it impossible for authorities to control and monitor them.43 At the same time, however, their geographical knowledge, military propensity for hit-and-run warfare, and inter-tribal connectedness rendered them excellent spies and informers and therefore necessary elements in any desert campaign. By all accounts, Bedouins aligned themselves willingly with any crusader army for the promise of plunder and booty, and as willingly they abandoned it for better prospects elsewhere. The Bedouins’ (seemingly) lawless existence and eagerness to offer their military skills in return for material gain caused at least one thirteenth-century Latin observer, the German pilgrim Thietmar, to liken them to the kind of western mercenaries known in France as routiers, and I think it is likely that this is exactly how they were regarded by the Frankish princes and warlords who engaged with them. Here is how David Crouch described late-twelfth-century

41

42

43

See e.g. Gerald of Wales’ description of the Irish as a gens silvestris in Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hibernica, et Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. James F. Dimock (London, 1867), p. 151. Historia peregrinorum, pp. 155–56. See e.g. Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The Tractatus de locis et statu sancta terre ierosolimitane,” in The Crusades and their Sources, ed. John France and William G. Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 111–33, at p. 131. Jochen G. Schenk, “Nomadic Violence in the First Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Military Orders,” Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), 39–55.

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opinion of the routiers as depicted in the History of William Marshal: “They are only interested in money; they are incompetent soldiers useful only for the more sordid aspects of warfare; they are dishonest, and oppressive if given power; but in particular they stand outside the network of relationships between king-duke, magnates and knights. They were not loyal either, despite owing their living to fulfilling short-term military contracts efficiently.”44 Twelfth- and thirteenth-century commentators on the Bedouins’ character and role in warfare could not have come to a very different assessment. In fact, to some extent the comparison cut both ways, for in 1179 Pope Alexander III condemned Brabançon, Aragonese, Navarrese and Basque mercenaries for waging war against Christian folk “in the manner of the pagans,” thus drawing a cultural comparison between these soldiers of fortune’s conduct in warfare and that considered prevalent within the culture to which the Bedouins were thought to belong.45 However, if it was indeed the case that Latins, like Thietmar, regarded Bedouin tribes as the indigenous answer to the rotte back home, then this might have – at least to some extent –determined the context in which they expected to engage with a considerable part of the indigenous population. Routier was decidedly not a compliment, but a term that carried numerous unfavorable social and cultural connotations, not least that of “conscienceless violence” and “lack of social responsibility,”46 which would have been reflected in all manner of Latin–Bedouin interactions. Any attempt at understanding the Bedouins’ conduct within the context of their own culture is thus necessarily rendered hopeless by the use of a loaded terminology which inevitably situated the subject within a predetermined discourse of private violence. The important point to make is that from all of this the Bedouins emerge as independent players whose pastoral way of life and tribal rules, customs, expectations and desires subjected them to different norms of behavior than expected by the Turkish and Latin foreigners who had come to dominate the political landscape. Although it is easy to comprehend why Thietmar likened the Bedouins to the bands of roaming mercenaries whom he had encountered in the West, his terminology also reveals a mono-cultural perspective that completely ignores the subject’s own cultural reality and societal influences, which is why we should best avoid it. To sum up, although pre-modern historians have no difficulty pointing out similarities between post-modern “new warfare” of our age and the warfare of the periods they study, the question that needs answering is whether these similarities are in fact substantial or merely structural. Like transcultural warfare in our post-modern age, transcultural warfare in the Middle Ages attracted its fair share of ideologically motivated volunteers. But should twenty-first-century and medieval religiously motivated fighters be considered in any way similar in

44 45 46

David J. F. Crouch, “William Marshal and the Mercenariat,” in Mercenaries and Paid Men, pp. 15–32, at p. 18. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 16, 22.

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substance if one group is mainly made up of professional warriors whose lifestyle centered on military activity and the other mostly of what has been labeled a “disaffected youth”? In some cases the similarities in substance might be easy to find, in others not. The second point I wanted to make is that if we get into the business of categorizing military actors and their actions in a transcultural (or even global) context then we need firstly to move away from a mono-cultural perspective and terminology by studying actors within their cultural contexts and secondly to acknowledge the mono-cultural bias of our sources. Lastly, it is time to discuss what the terminology customarily employed to describe the “new wars” of the twenty-first century (“irregular,” “unconventional,” “non-state actor,” “proxy” etc.) should mean for us and how we should engage with it if meaningful comparisons across the Westphalian divide are to be drawn.

10 Friend or Foe? The Catalan Company as Proxy Actors in the Aegean and Asia Minor Vacuum Mike Carr

The term “vacuum” could apply to the Aegean and Asia Minor region at almost any point between the shattering of the Byzantine empire by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453. During these years the area was divided amongst a number of competing factions, few of whom – with the exception of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century – dominated for any significant length of time. Despite this instability, the region remained hugely important, especially within the context of trade between Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia. As a consequence it was hotly contested by internal and external powers from a variety of ethnic, religious and political backgrounds.1 In particular, the region witnessed the growing use of “proxy actors” by external forces, who aligned themselves with local factions in order to gain influence and further their interests in the area. The study of proxy warfare in the Aegean and Asia Minor takes on added significance, given the prevalence of discussions amongst military historians and policy makers around “epochal change theory” and the emergence of a “new Middle Ages” or “neo-Medievalism” in modern military encounters, which it is claimed has led to a rise in irregular warfare against violent non-state actors, for which proxies of various types are regularly employed (e.g. warlords, militias and mercenaries).2 Thus, when compared to present-day military encounters – not least in regions of the Middle East where a power vacuum has also developed into a crucible of different competing factions and intervening (but indecisive) outside powers – certain parallels can be drawn with the use of proxies in the fourteenth-century Aegean and Asia Minor. Of particular importance for the discussion of medieval proxy actors in this region are the mercenary band known as the Catalan Grand Company, who campaigned in

1

2

For an overview of the region at this time, see Mike Carr, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291–1352 (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 17–31; Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, ed. Mike Carr and Nikolaos G. Chrissis (Farnham, 2014), pp. 4–12; Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade: Venetian Crete and the Emirates of Menteshe and Aydin: 1300–1415 (Venice, 1983), pp. 3–20. See, for example, Phil Williams, From the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age: The Decline of the State and U.S. Strategy (Carlisle, PA, 2008); Robert J. Bunker (ed.), Non-State Threats and Future Wars (London, 2003); Jorg Friedrichs, “The Meaning of New Medievalism,” European Journal of International Relations 7 (2001), 475–502.

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Asia Minor, the Aegean and Greece from 1303 to 1311, before conquering the duchy of Athens and ruling it until 1388. The exploits of the Catalan Company are well known and have been the focus of many detailed studies, pioneered by Antonio Rubió y Lluch in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 Kenneth M. Setton made the Catalans accessible to an English readership in the mid-twentieth century through his studies into their rulership of Athens,4 many aspects of which have since been expanded and improved by other eastern-Mediterranean specialists.5 Since then, much research has been undertaken into the Catalan campaign in the East and their establishment in Greece. Of particular relevance to this article are R. I. Burns’s study into the Catalan relations with the Angevins and Aragonese from 1305 to 1311 and Angeliki Laiou’s detailed analysis of their service with the Byzantines and campaigns in Thrace and Macedonia, which remains the best narrative of events.6 Likewise three recent studies, two published in this journal, have shed much light on the military history of the Catalan campaign and the use of mercenaries in Byzantium.7 Considering the wealth of research into the Catalan Company, it is not the purpose of this article to uncover hitherto unknown facets of their campaign in the East, but rather to draw on existing research in order to frame the actions of the Company within the context of medieval proxy actors, the focus of the

3

4

5

6

7

Rubió y Lluch published many works on the Catalans, notably La Espedición y Dominación de los Catalans en Oriente juzgadas por los Griegos, Memórias de la Real Acadamia de Buenos Letras de Barcelona, vol. IV (Barcelona, 1893); La companyía Catalana sota el Comandament de Teobald de Çepoy, 1307–1310 (Barcelona, 1923). Kenneth M. Setton, “The Avignonese Papacy and the Catalan Duchy of Athens,” Byzantion 17 (1944–45), 281–303; idem, Catalan Domination of Athens: 1311–1388 (Cambridge, MA, 1948); idem, “The Catalans in Greece, 1311–1380,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth M. Setton, 6 vols. (Madison, WI, 1969–89), 3:167–224. For example, David Jacoby, “Catalans, Turcs et Vénitiens en Romanie (1305–1332): Un nouveau témoignage de Marino Sanudo Torsello,” Studi Medievali 15.1 (1974), 217–61; “L’état catalan en Grèce: société et institutions politiques,” in Els Catalans a la Mediterrània oriental a l'edat mitjana, ed. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona, 2003), pp. 79–101; “La ‘Compagnie catalane’ et l’état catalan de Grèce – Quelques aspects de leur histoire,” in idem, Société et démographie à Byzance et en Romanie latine (London, 1975), item. V; Jep Pascot, Les almugavares: mercenaires Catalans du Moyen Age (1302–1388) (Brussels, 1971); Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, “The Catalans of Athens and the beginning of Turkish Expansion in the Aegean Area,” Studi Medievali 21.2 (1980), 821–38. Robert Ignatius Burns, “The Catalan Company and the European Powers, 1305–1311,” Speculum 29 (1954), 751–71; Angeliki E. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282–1328 (Cambridge, MA, 1972), pp. 134–243. Also of use is the popular history by Alfonso Lowe, The Catalan Vengeance (London, 1972). Savvas Kyriakidis, “The Employment of Large Groups of Mercenaries in Byzantium in the Period ca. 1290–1305 as Viewed by the Sources,” Byzantion 79 (2009), 208–30; Scott Jessee and Anatoly Isaenko, “The Military Effectiveness of Alan Mercenaries in Byzantium, 1301–1306,” Journal of Medieval Military History 11 (2013), 107–32; Nikolaos S. Kanellopoulos and Ioanna K. Lekea, “Prelude to Kephissos (1311): An Analysis of the Battle of Apros (1305),” Journal of Medieval Military History 12 (2014), 119–38. See also Mark C. Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204–1453 (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 78–82 and passim.

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special issue of this journal. The Catalans came into contact with many of the main players in the late-medieval Mediterranean at some point, and by focussing on them this article aims to provide a case study into the means by which local and outside powers in the later Middle Ages attempted to use irregular proxy actors to achieve their goals in contested regions. It will focus on how these powers aimed to utilize the Catalans as a proxy group by attempting to exert authority and control over them, such as through payment and the bestowal of titles. It will also explore the reaction of the Catalans to these overtures. As we shall see, they had a habit of antagonizing almost everyone they dealt with, especially their employers (hence the title “friend or foe?”), so the article will also posit some observations as to why no state was able to successfully control the Catalans, and other proxy actors, in this area. The Geo-political Context To emphasize the complexity of the region under discussion – and also to demonstrate the limitations of simplistic descriptors such as “Latins,” “Greeks” and “Turks” – this article will begin with a very brief overview of the various factions with whom the Catalans came into contact, divided into the three main contested areas through which they travelled: Asia Minor, the Aegean and Greece. The first of these, Asia Minor, was a land that had been split between Byzantine and Seljuk rule since the eleventh century. By the end of the thirteenth century the situation was somewhat different. The empire of the Seljuk Turks had collapsed after their defeat at the hands of the Mongols at Köse Dag in 1243 and in the second half of the century the authority of the Mongols began to rapidly decline, allowing a number of Turkish tribal principalities, known today as the beyliks or emirates, to establish themselves in place of the Mongols. These Turks quickly advanced through Byzantine lands in western Anatolia and by the early years of the fourteenth century they controlled the majority of the Anatolian–Aegean coast, leaving the Byzantines only the coastal lands hugging the southern shore of the Sea of Marmora and opposite the hinterland Constantinople. The Turkish beyliks were not, however, united and they regularly fought against one another and sometimes aligned themselves with non-Turks in order to further their own objectives. The Aydin Turks and the Ottomans, for example, famously allied with the Byzantine emperor John Kantakouzenos during the Byzantine civil wars in the mid-fourteenth century. Asia Minor was thus a region contested not only by the Byzantines and Turks (and on occasion Latins), but also between the different Turkish beyliks, who did not form one homogeneous entity.8

8

For more on the Turkish beyliks, see Carr, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, pp. 32–37; Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 4–12, 105–21; Rudi Paul Lindner, Explorations in Ottoman Prehistory (Ann Arbor, 2007), pp. 1–12; Cemal Kafadar, Between the Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 1–9; Claude Cahen, PreOttoman Turkey: A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Culture and History c.1071–1330, trans. J. Jones-Williams (London, 1968), pp. 1–32, 64–72.

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The second contested area was the Aegean. Here the islands were divided among those held by the Venetians since the Fourth Crusade, notably Crete and Naxos; those which (for the early fourteenth century anyway) remained in Greek hands, such as Lesbos and Leros; and those which were seized within the first decade of the fourteenth century by other Latins, namely Rhodes (by the Hospitallers) and Chios (by the Genoese). To speak of these islands as being split between two united “Greek” or “Latin” spheres is, however, an oversimplification. The Hospitallers, Genoese and Venetians, although all “Latins,” were often in direct competition and conflict with one another, and many of the islands governed by Greeks were ruled without much direct intervention from the emperor and government at Constantinople, despite being nominally “Byzantine.” To add to this were the aforementioned Turks who began to raid the islands once they had reached the Aegean coast at the beginning of the century.9 The result was a situation every bit as complex as that found in Asia Minor: the Aegean zone was, on the face of it, contested between Latins and Greeks, Latins and Turks, and Greeks and Turks, but also between the different Latin and Greek factions themselves, and – on a few occasions – between coalitions of Byzantine and Latin, or Byzantine and Turkish powers.10 The third contested area was Greece. Like the Aegean, the Venetians controlled territories in Greece (such as Modon and Coron), as did the Greeks themselves, although in Epiros, Thessaly and Mistras they were sometimes rivals and not allies of the emperor and government in Constantinople. To add to this were the lands ruled by the Franks since the Fourth Crusade, such as the principality of Achaia and its vassal state, the duchy of Athens, whose suzerain lords were the Angevin kings of Naples. In 1311 the Catalans seized Athens and added further to this complicated mix: they were traditionally aligned with the Aragonese and thus natural enemies of the Angevins, as we shall see. On the northern borders were also the long-time rivals of the Byzantines, such as the Albanians, Serbs, and Bulgarians.11 The existence of such a complex patchwork of states meant that Greece was contested at sometime or another between almost all of the aforementioned regional powers, few of whom were ever aligned into cohesive national or ethnic groups.

9

10

11

For the various Aegean islands, see the references provided by Carr, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, pp. 21–25; Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 3–20; Peter Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, 1204–1500 (London, 1995), pp. 135–60. The most well known of these were the “anti-Turkish leagues” of the 1330s and 1340s, for which see Carr, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, pp. 63–78; Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 21–62. For more on Greece, see Lock, Franks in the Aegean, pp. 68–108; Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, 2nd Edition (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 114–56.

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The Composition of the Catalan Company and its Campaign in the East The Catalan Company was formed after the end of the war of the Sicilian Vespers in 1302 by Roger of Flor, an ex-Templar and commander of Aragonese forces under Frederick III of Sicily, the younger brother of James II of Aragon.12 Roger realized that he and his troops would be surplus to requirements in Sicily, so he sought service with the Byzantine emperor, Andronikos II Palaiologos. The Company, which reached Constantinople in September 1303, was initially made up of a mixture of troops who had fought in the Sicilian war, mostly Aragonese and Catalan cavalry and almogavar infantry, but later it also included contingents of local Turkish and Greek fighters from Asia Minor. The exact size of the army varies in the sources, but the most probable figure is that given by Ramon Muntaner, a leading member of the Company and key source for events, who stated that the force recruited in 1302–3 consisted of 1,500 cavalry, 4,000 almogavar infantry and 1,000 seamen, not counting galley slaves and sailors.13 Given that their numbers probably increased by a few thousand in the years between their arrival at Constantinople and the battle of Halmyros in 1311, the Catalans were quite sizeable for a mercenary band, especially in the context of the region at this time.14 The almogavars, in particular, were the crack troops of the Catalans: a highly specialized group of frontier infantry, lightly armed and famed for their agility, hardiness and bravery in battle. The name “almogavar” comes from the Arabic for “devastator,” an apt descriptor of their traits, as is confirmed by the account of the Catalan chronicler Bernard Desclot: These soldiers that are called almogavars are men who live for naught save warfare, and they dwell not in towns nor in cities but in mountains and forests. And they fight continually with the Saracens and make forays within their lands for a day or two, pillaging and taking many Saracens captive, and likewise their goods, whereby they live. And they suffer many hardships such as other men could scarce endure. And at times they pass two full

12

13

14

According to Ramon Muntaner, Roger of Flor conceived the idea of founding the Catalan Company during the celebrations of the Peace of Caltabellotta, which ended the Sicilian Vespers on 31 August 1302: Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 9 vols. (Barcelona, 1927–52), 6:17–18; The Catalan Expedition to the East: from the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner, trans. Robert D. Hughes (Barcelona, 2006), pp. 36–37. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:22; Hughes trans., p. 42. Pachymeres gives the slightly larger size of 8,000 “Catalans and almogavars” (Kατελάνων καì ’Aμογαβάρων), whereas Gregoras reduces the number to 1,000 Catalans and 1,000 almogavars: George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, ed. A. Failler, trans. V. Laurent, 5 vols. (Paris, 1984–99), 4:430–31; Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte: Historia Rhomaïke, trans. J. L. Van Dieten, 6 vols. (Stuttgart, 1973–2007), 1:177; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, p. 134; Jessee and Isaenko, “The Military Effectiveness of Alan Mercenaries in Byzantium,” p. 120; Kanellopoulos and Lekea, “Prelude to Kephissos,” p. 122. Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics and Technology (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 60–61. Gregoras claims that on the eve of the battle of Halmyros, the Catalan army numbered 3,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry: Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, p. 194.

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days, if need be, without food and live off the herbs of the fields, and this they do without harm to themselves. And the adalids who are their chiefs guide them about, for these know the regions of land and the roads therein. And the almogavars wear no other raiment than a tunic or shift, whether it be summer or winter, and about their limbs breeches of leather, and on their feet leather sandals. And they bear at their side a good dagger with a thick strap and a scabbard which hangs from the girdle. And each man has a lance and two darts and a leather shoulder bag to carry his food. And these men are exceedingly strong and are swift to flee or to pursue, and they are Catalans and Aragonese and Saracens.15

In particular, the almogavars were very effective against heavily armoured knights, primarily because of the agility afforded them by their light armour, and their ability to use a range of weapons including spears, which they sometimes broke in half in order to disembowel horses at close quarters, as well as crossbows, javelins and other projectiles for unhorsing riders at a distance. They even excelled in maritime combat, where their nimbleness and willingness to fight barefoot on slippery decks proved an asset against more heavily armoured opponents. To add to this, the almogavars were highly disciplined and regularly paired with the cavalry units to great effect.16 The Catalans were recruited by the Byzantine emperor in order to re-conquer territories lost to the Turks in Asia Minor. Initially at least, relations between the Catalans and their Byzantine employers were good and after arriving in Constantinople in September 1303 the Company was received well and the soldiers’ wages were paid.17 The peace was temporarily shattered when a skirmish broke out between the Catalans and the Genoese of Pera, but this did not adversely affect relations with the emperor.18 In the autumn of 1303 the Company set out to confront the Turks, defeating one group at the Artaki peninsula on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara.19 Here the Catalans were joined by an army of Alan mercenaries. The Catalans and Alans frequently clashed as they wintered at Artaki before resuming the campaign against the Turks in April 1304, this time further 15

16

17

18 19

Bernard Desclot, Crónica, ed. M. Coll i Alentorn, 4 vols. (Barcelona, 1949–50), 3:63; Chronicle of the Reign of King Pedro III of Aragon: A.D. 1276–1285, trans. F. L. Critchlow (Princeton, NJ, 1928), pp. 28–29; J. N. Hillgarth, “The Problem of a Catalan Mediterranean Empire 1229–1327,” English Historical Review Supplement 8 (1975), 1–54, at pp. 10–11. See Kanellopoulos and Lekea, “Prelude to Kephissos,” pp. 122–23; Hillgarth, “The Problem of a Catalan- Mediterranean Empire,” pp. 10–11; Paul Douglas Humphries, “Of Arms and Men: Siege and Battle Tactics in the Catalan Grand Chronicles (1208–1387),” Military Affairs 49 (1985), pp. 174–75; DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century, pp. 58–65; John Pryor, “The Naval Battles of Roger of Lauria,” in idem, Commerce, Shipping and Naval Warfare in the Medieval Mediterranean, Variorum Reprints (London, 1987), item VI, 179–216, esp. pp. 188, 199–200. The arrival of the Catalans at Constantinople is recorded by the three main sources for events: Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:21–23; Hughes trans., pp. 41–3; George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:430–37; Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:176. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:23–25; Hughes trans., pp. 44–46. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:25–26; Hughes trans., pp. 47–48. According to Pachymeres the Catalans “performed many evils” at Artaki, including looting and pillaging the native Greeks and harassing the local women: George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:436–37, 56–59.

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south where they defeated a force from Sarukhan and Aydin near Philadelphia, and another force of the same Turks, as well as those from Menteshe, outside the city of Tire.20 In the summer the Catalans defeated the Aydin Turks again in the coastal region of Anaea, opposite Samos, and then another force from Aydin “and all the other Turks who had been sent from the other tribes” further inland in August.21 In this time Roger of Flor returned to Constantinople (in March 1304), where he collected money for wages from the emperor, which was distributed amongst the Company upon his arrival at Anaea, probably in the early summer.22 Relations between the Catalans and their Byzantine paymasters began, however, to deteriorate after Andronikos recalled Roger of Flor and his army from Asia Minor to Constantinople in late summer or early autumn 1304, ostensibly to help his son Michael IX, who was campaigning against the Bulgarians in Thrace. Roger returned to Constantinople as requested by the emperor while the bulk of the Catalan army wintered in the Gallipoli region. The first indication of trouble is given by Muntaner, who reports that Andronikos “out of malice” attempted to pay the Company with debased coinage.23 According to Muntaner, this transgression marked the point at which the Byzantines put in motion a plot to have Roger of Flor assassinated. First Andronikos placated the Catalans over the debased coinage by granting Roger the office of “Caesar of the Empire,”24 along with authority to govern any territories he conquered from the Turks in Asia Minor. The title of Grand Duke passed in turn to Berengar of Entença, a Catalan lord who had joined the Company some months earlier with a force of 300 horsemen and 1,000 footsoldiers.25 After this Andronikos dispatched Roger to his son Michael IX in Adrianople, for reasons which remain unknown.26 Here Roger and his retinue were “cut into pieces” on the orders of Michael IX by Alan mercenaries in the Byzantine army (4 April 1305), before an attack was launched at the main Catalan force at Gallipoli.27 The Company repelled the Byzantine assault and afterwards embarked on what has become known as the Catalan Vengeance, a five-year rampage where they occupied the fortress of Gallipoli and devastated the areas of Constantinople, Thrace and Macedonia, before marching into Thessaly and finally

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:32–35; trans. Hughes, pp. 55–58; George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:462–71; Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:177–78. Muntaner writes that the second battle took place on the Feast of the Assumption, so around 15 August 1304: Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:37–38; Hughes trans., pp. 62–23. He paid the Company’s wages before the defeat of the Turks at Anaea, which was probably in June or July 1304: Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:30, 37; Hughes trans., pp. 52, 62. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:40–41; Hughes trans., p. 66. Cf. George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:526–30. This was a purely honorific title, but still one of the highest titles, being third in the hierarchy: Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 143–4. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:41; Hughes trans., p. 67. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:41–44; Hughes trans., pp. 67–70. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:46–48; Hughes trans., pp. 73–75. Cf. George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:474–77; Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:179.

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to Athens.28 Initially they were under the command of Berengar of Entença, who led armies to sack the regions of Heraclea, Rodosto and Panion on the northern coast of the Sea of Marmara, before he was captured by the Genoese in May 1305.29 But this proved to only be a minor setback and the Catalans won a major victory over a Byzantine army, including a large contingent of Alan mercenaries, at Apros in southern Thrace on 20 June.30 The defeat dealt the Byzantine military a severe blow and thereafter the Company, now under the command of the marshal Bernard of Rocafort, overran Thrace with little opposition.31 In the following years, the main hindrance to the Catalans was their lack of unity. Rocafort was a divisive character and a clear split in the Company emerged when Entença was released from prison and returned to Gallipoli in late summer 1306. Although Entença was killed a few months later, the Company was not united behind Rocafort.32 It is against this backdrop of infighting and factional strife that attempts by the Aragonese and Franco-Angevins to bring the Catalans into their Aegean schemes were stepped up. Eventually the dearth of food in Thrace forced the Catalans to leave Gallipoli for Macedonia in the summer of 1307. They made their base at Kassandra on the Chalkidike Peninsula and raided the monasteries on Mount Athos before laying siege to Thessalonica in 1308. However, a lack of provisions and spirited defence held up the conquest of the city and further exacerbated the factional infighting within the Company. Things came to a head towards the end of 1308 when a number of dissatisfied members seized Rocafort and handed him to the Angevins. In the following year he was taken to Naples and imprisoned by King Robert where he later died.33 With Rocafort removed, the Catalans left Macedonia for Thessaly. After sacking this land for a year they marched further south and entered the service of Walter of Brienne, the duke of Athens, in the spring of 1310. Unsurprisingly, relations quickly soured and on 15 March 1311 the Catalans defeated Walter at Halmyros and conquered the duchy of Athens for themselves.34 The Catalan–Byzantine Agreement The agreement made between the Byzantines and the Catalans was a result of the dilemma Andronikos II faced in regard to his eastern frontier: he needed to reverse the advances of the Turks, but required mercenaries to carry this out, as

28 29 30

31 32 33 34

Lowe, The Catalan Vengeance, pp. 58–122. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:48–52; Hughes trans., pp. 76–80. Jessee and Isaenko, “The Military Effectiveness of Alan Mercenaries in Byzantium,” 125–31; Kanellopoulos and Lekea, “Prelude to Kephissos,” 125–37; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 162–64. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 166–71. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:78–79, 84–88; Hughes trans, pp. 113–14, 119–22. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:104–06; Hughes trans, pp. 142–44; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 220–26. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 226–29.

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the native soldiery had proved to be insufficient in numbers, training and loyalty.35 Ramon Muntaner makes it clear that Roger of Flor was aware of this, writing that Andronikos “was in dire need of [Roger’s] assistance, for the Turks [had] taken from him more land than can be covered in a thirty-day journey.”36 Roger was therefore in a position of strength when it came to negotiating the terms of the Catalans’ service with the empire, which were extraordinarily generous. According to Muntaner, who helped draw up the contract, these stipulated that the Catalans would be paid four months’ wages in advance upon their arrival at Constantinople, at a rate of four ounces per month for armed horsemen and one per month for footsoldiers, and that the emperor would agree to marry his niece, Maria, to Roger, as well as make him Grand Duke of the empire.37 This policy was, however, fatally flawed from the outset. The imperial treasury was almost empty and the loss of territories in Asia Minor further decreased the tax revenue, meaning that the empire could not afford to pay these mercenaries sufficient funds in order to maintain their loyalty. Evidence of this problem can be seen in Andronikos’ dealings with Roger and his army. Upon their arrival at Constantinople, the emperor managed to pay the Company the four months’ wages promised to them. This amounted to the substantial sum of 40,000 ounces, if Muntaner’s numbers are to be trusted, which has been calculated by Bartusis as equating to 34 hyperpyron per month for a horse soldier and 8.5 for a foot soldier. This was a considerable sum when compared to the much lower wages of 3 hyperpyron per month that were paid to the Alan mercenaries who served the Byzantines at the same time, and also more than the standard rate paid to mercenaries in Italy during the period.38 Unsurprisingly, the emperor had considerable difficulty raising these funds and, according to the Greek writers George Pachymeres and Nikephoros Gregoras, he had to take drastic measures, which included imposing a special levy on grain, confiscating one third of the pronoiai located in the western territories, withholding the salaries of palace employees and devaluing the currency.39 In fact, as Kyriakidis has pointed out, the agreement made between Roger and the emperor seems to have been exceedingly generous on the part of the Byzantines. The bestowal of the title of Grand Duke, for example, was not a privilege often awarded to the commander of a mercenary company. The office could be both an honorary title and an effective command, equivalent to a grand admiral or supreme commander of naval forces. Even though Andronikos may have only

35 36 37

38 39

Kyriakidis, “The Employment of Large Groups of Mercenaries in Byzantium,” 208–30. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:18; Hughes trans., p. 37. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:18–23; Hughes trans., pp. 38–43. See also the corresponding accounts of George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:432–33 and Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:176–77. Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army, p. 153. George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:434–37; Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:177. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 133, 141; Kyriakidis, “The Employment of Large Groups of Mercenaries in Byzantium,” 217, 225–26.

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intended to bestow the honorary title on Roger, in reality Roger was given full autonomy over how to conduct his campaigns in Asia Minor and also over the distribution of the Company’s wages. In addition, it seems that the agreement included no stipulations over the size of the Catalan army or the duration of service, which was an unusual omission for a contract with mercenaries.40 The desperate state of the empire in 1302 seems therefore to have led Andronikos to make a deal with the Catalans which he was simply unable to meet. A further sign of the emperor’s desperation can be found after the Catalans objected to the debased coinage with which he attempted to pay them in autumn 1304. At this point Andronikos promoted Roger de Flor to the position of “Caesar of the Empire” and granted him command of territories in Asia Minor, with virtual independence from the government in Constantinople.41 According to Pachymeres, he also promised the Company that he would pay them 20,000 gold coins and 300,000 modii of grain as soon as they crossed to Asia Minor.42 But these measures were insufficient to inspire loyalty in the face of failed payments, and ultimately the assassination of Roger of Flor backfired – a reflection of the weakness of Byzantium at this time and the risks of employing a proxy group that one could not control by conventional means. The Catalan–Turkish Agreement It is worth noting that after the assassination of Roger of Flor, the Catalans allied themselves with some of the Turkish groups whom they had been previously fighting against. Gregoras claims that when the Catalans were at Gallipoli (from 1305) they asked 500 Turks to join with them from Asia Minor.43 These Turks were not paid by the Company, but were instead allowed to keep four-fifths of the booty they captured for themselves, with the other fifth going to the Catalans. According to Muntaner, under these terms 800 horsemen led by a warlord named Xemelic joined the Company, followed by a further 400 horsemen and 200 footsoldiers led by Xemelic’s brother.44 Pachymeres states that these Turks came from the Aydin beylik and that they were also joined by many

40

41 42 43

44

Kyriakidis, “The Employment of Large Groups of Mercenaries in Byzantium,” 217–19; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, p. 132. Pachymeres writes that Andronikos later complained that he had only asked Roger of Flor for 500 knights and 1,000 infantry to fight the Turks, but by this stage he was unable to argue otherwise: George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:532–33. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:41–44; Hughes trans., pp. 68–70; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, p. 143. George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:552–55. Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:181–82; Nicolas Oikonomides, “The Turks in Europe (1305–13) and the Serbs in Asia Minor (1313),” in The Ottoman Emirate (1300–1389): Halcyon Days in Crete I: A Symposium Held in Rethymnon, 11–13 January 1991, ed. Elizabeth A. Zachariadou (Rethymnon, 1993), pp. 159–68, at p. 160. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:75–77; Hughes trans., pp. 109–10.

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Greeks from Asia Minor.45 A few years later another 1,000 Turcopole horsemen (Christianised Turks), who had previously served the emperor as mercenaries, also joined the Company.46 The additions of these Turks helped the Catalans to defeat the Byzantines at Apros in June 1305 and easily wreak havoc in Thrace and Macedonia over the following years.47 The appearance and apparent prominence of three irregular war bands at this time – the Catalans and Turks fighting together and the Alans under the employ of the Byzantines – is evidence of the lack of a centralized power and the prominence of irregular proxies in the region. The Catalans and the Aragonese In the second stage of the Catalan campaign and the next contested region, that of Thrace and Macedonia, the Catalans were courted by the great western Mediterranean factions who were keen to utilize their military potential to gain a foothold in the region. The first of these were the Aragonese and the second were their rivals, the Franco-Angevins, both of whom had fought for control over Sicily for twenty years before the Catalans began their campaign. The fact that the Aragonese approached the Company is hardly surprising. They were kinsmen and the Catalans were a key component of the Aragonese armies during the Sicilian war. Moreover, after the end of the war western attention was once again focussed on leading a crusade to recover Constantinople. The Catalans were perfectly placed to carry out western plans in the Aegean, and for the Aragonese they presented the opportunity to create a vassal state in former Byzantine territories that could rival those of the Angevins in Greece. Both James II of Aragon and his younger brother Fredrick III of Sicily were aware of events in Byzantium and once they heard of the conflict with the emperor, they took the opportunity to bring the Catalans back into the fold. Already in 1304 Frederick had intimated to Pope Benedict XI that he was willing to assist in a crusade to recover Constantinople, after which he received papal permission to send ten galleys under the command of his half-brother Sancho of Aragon to capture Byzantine islands in the Aegean. One of Sancho’s objectives was to seek out the Catalans in order to see whether they would be willing to assist in this mission.48 The Company certainly seem to have been open to these overtures, as Muntaner reports that after the assassination of Roger of Flor they raised the banners of St Peter and those of the kings of Aragon and Sicily at their fortress in Gallipoli and

45 46 47 48

George Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 4:642–43. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:76–77; Hughes trans., p. 110. Jessee and Isaenko, “The Military Effectiveness of Alan Mercenaries in Byzantium,” 125–31; Kanellopoulos and Lekea, “Prelude to Kephissos,” 125–37. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 138–47. Laiou writes that James of Aragon, had separate plans to bring the Catalans under his control, although their exact nature remains obscure: ibid., pp. 138–39, 176–78. Burns also writes of James’ connection to the Catalans, but insists that the king never sought to control them in the same degree as Frederick did: Burns, “The Catalan Company and the European Powers,” 767–68.

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ran into battle with the cry of “Aragon! Aragon! Saint George! Saint George!”49 Sancho’s fleet arrived in the Aegean in spring 1305 and although Pachymeres says that Berengar of Entença left temporarily to join with Sancho and raid some islands, it seems that the Catalans did not make any concrete agreement with Sancho. Muntaner, who was one of the Company’s hierarchy and in a position to know, does not mention Sancho’s fleet or any agreement with Frederick, beyond a general sense of loyalty to Aragon. With the exception of Pachymeres, the other sources are also silent about any concerted action between the Catalans and Sancho against the Byzantines.50 The failure of Sancho’s mission did not, however, put an end to Frederick’s desire to bring the Catalan Company under his control. In 1306–7 he discussed the possibility of sending his cousin, the Infant Ferdinand of Majorca, the third son of King James of Majorca, to the Aegean to lead the Company in his (Frederick’s) name.51 This is the first time that Frederick formally treated the Catalans as his vassals and in theory, once their allegiance was gained by the Infant, they would carry out Frederick’s orders in the region and seek his permission before making any important decisions.52 The reality was, however, somewhat different. By the time Ferdinand reached Gallipoli in May 1307 the Catalan leadership was split between the party of Berengar of Entença, who was supported by Muntaner and Ferdinand Eiximenis of Arenós, and that of Bernard of Rocafort. Entença’s party agreed that the Infant Ferdinand should lead the Company in the name of Frederick III, but Rocafort opposed this. Muntaner, who clearly disliked Rocafort, claims that this was because Rocafort felt that his position in the Company would be threatened by the arrival of the Infant, who would support Entença’s party. Furthermore, Rocafort bore a grudge against Frederick III and he managed to convince the greater part of the Catalan army that Frederick had abandoned them after the Sicilian war and that his leadership would be detrimental to the interests of the Company. In the end, the Catalans, after being coerced by Rocafort, proposed that the Infant should lead them in his own right and without overlordship from Frederick III. Although this offer flattered the Infant, he ultimately declined it as he did not wish to go against Frederick’s orders.53 Therefore, although the Catalans flew the banners of the kings of Aragon and Sicily, in reality they remained independent actors in the

49

50 51 52 53

Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:53, 55, 69–70; Hughes trans., pp. 82, 85, 103. It should be noted that the edition of Muntaner that I have consulted (op. cit., p. 55), along with the Hughes translation (p. 85) does not include the words “Aragon! Aragon!” in the Catalan battle cry, but the translation by Lady Goodenough, which has been followed by Burns and others, does: The Chronicle of Muntaner, trans. Lady Goodenough (London, 1920–21; repr. Cambridge, Ontario, 2000), p. 435; Burns, “The Catalan Company and the European Powers,” p. 768. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:38–52; Hughes trans., pp. 65–80; Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 1:575–76; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, p. 145. For more on the Infant Ferdinand, see Beverly Berg, “The Moreote Expedition of Ferrando of Majorca in the Aragonese Chronicle of Morea,” Byzantion 55 (1985), 69–90. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 180–83. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:78–84; Hughes trans., pp. 113–18.

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Aegean theatre. Even though there is little doubt that Muntaner and most of the Company felt a strong degree of loyalty to the Aragonese royal house, the leadership was divided over the extent to which control of the Company should be surrendered to a ruler distanced from the complexities of the region which they were in the midst of overrunning. The Catalans and the Franco-Angevins After this point, the other main western player in the Mediterranean – the Franco-Angevin faction (which was supported by the papacy) – also tried to secure the services of the Catalans. This was instigated by Charles of Valois, the titular Latin emperor of Constantinople and the younger brother of Philip IV of France. At the time of the Catalan campaign, Charles, along with Philip IV, Pope Clement V, and the Angevins of Naples, who were overlords of most of the Frankish lands in Greece, had focussed their efforts on a crusade to re-conquer Constantinople which would also shore up Latin Greece and pave the way for the recovery of the Holy Land.54 By 1307 the crusade preparations were advanced and Charles dispatched his envoy Thibault of Cepoy to the Aegean to negotiate with the Company and bring them into the forthcoming campaign, much as Frederick III had attempted to do with Sancho of Aragon and the Infant Ferdinand.55 Thibault reached the Catalans in the summer of 1307, who by this time were under the command of Bernard of Rocafort. According to Muntaner, who was no doubt influenced by his dislike of Rocafort, the majority of the Company were unwilling to swear their allegiance to Charles of Valois, but Rocafort “realising that he had been scorned by the Houses of Sicily, Aragon and Majorca, decided to seek friendship with Sir Charles, [...] thus he swore allegiance [...] and made the entire Company do the same.”56 Interestingly, although the Catalans were not natural allies of the FrancoAngevins, they did outwardly display some loyalty to the pope, as is shown by Muntaner’s report that they flew the banner of St Peter. On one occasion, Muntaner even writes that the Catalans flew the papal banner “against the emperor and his soldiers, who were schismatics,” which is a clear reflection of the antiByzantine papal crusade rhetoric of the time.57 In any event, despite Muntaner’s words and the willingness of the Catalans to play the crusader card, there is

54 55 56

57

Carr, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, pp. 28–29. For more on Thibaut of Cepoy, see Burns, “The Catalan Company and the European Powers,” pp. 762–64. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:95–98; Hughes trans., pp. 130–34; Burns, “The Catalan Company and the European Powers,” 755–58, 763–64; Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins, pp. 208–09. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:53, 69–70; Hughes trans., pp. 82, 103. It should also be noted that the Company sent legates to the pope and the French, possibly to seek support against the Greeks, but these were unsuccessful: ibid., p. 111; Burns, “The Catalan Company and the European Powers,” pp. 755–56.

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nothing to suggest that they were interested in furthering papal objectives or seriously allying themselves to Charles of Valois. It is clear that Thibault of Cepoy’s authority over the Company was only theoretical, as is suggested by Muntaner, who writes that Rocafort “took less account of him that he would a dog.”58 By 1308 the crusade plans of Charles of Valois crumbled and the Catalans went about their business as an autonomous group once again. The Catalans and the Duchy of Athens The final stage of the Catalan campaign was the Company’s conquest of the duchy of Athens. Here some comparisons can be drawn with events in Constantinople seven years earlier. The duke of Athens at the time was Walter of Brienne, an Angevin vassal, who invited the Catalans into his territories to fight against various Greek factions who were threatening his borders, namely those of the emperor, as well as Thomas Komnenos of Epiros and John II Angelos of Thessaly. Walter agreed to pay the Catalans for six months’ service upfront at the same rate that the Byzantine emperor had agreed to pay them.59 However, once the Catalans had successfully beaten back the Greeks, Walter was unable to meet his side of the bargain and pay the Company. He attempted to avert disaster by splitting the Company in two and settling 500 men in his lands, but this tactic backfired as the Catalans refused to leave.60 What followed was one of the most remarkable pitched battles of the era. The Catalans, still with some of their Turkish allies, met the chivalry of Frankish Greece, commanded by Walter of Brienne, in the marshy plains near Halmyros in Thessaly. The accounts of the battle suggest that the Catalans were outnumbered, but that they were able to position themselves behind marshland which the Frankish heavy cavalry rashly charged into. This allowed the lightly armed almogavars to pick them off and win a resounding victory, not dissimilar to those at Courtrai and Bannockburn (the accounts of which may well have influenced those of Halmyros).61 During the battle Walter of Brienne was killed and the Catalans seized the duchy of Athens, becoming a “resident” Greek power themselves. Over

58 59

60 61

Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:98; Hughes trans., p. 134. The only difference was that this time a rate was stipulated for light horsemen. The wages were four ounces per month for heavily armoured horsemen, two ounces for light horsemen and one ounce for footsoldiers: Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:106–07; Hughes trans., pp. 145–46. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:107–08; Hughes trans., pp. 147–48. For a detailed reconstruction of the battle, see DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century, pp. 58–65. The sources give various numbers for the Athenian forces. The Aragonese Chronicle says more than 2,000 cavalry and 4,000 infantry, Gregoras gives the higher figure of 6,400 cavalry and more than 8,000 infantry, and Muntaner the inflated number of 700 French knights and 30,000 Greek footsoldiers. Gregoras states that the Catalan army had increased to 3,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry: Libro de los fechos et conquistas del principado de la Morea (Osnabrück, 1885, repr. 1968), p. 120; Nikephoros Gregoras, Rhomäische Geschichte, 1:194 ; Ramon Muntaner, Crònica, 6:107; Hughes trans., p. 147.

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the following decades, they cemented their alliances with the Turks, expanded their territories further into Greece and into Negroponte to the north, and embarked upon raids of the Aegean islands with the Turks. They also formed stronger ties with the Aragonese and accepted a number of Aragonese vassals as their commander, such as Alfonso Fadrique, the illegitimate son of Frederick III.62 Conclusions The Catalans provide an interesting case study into the use and activities of an irregular proxy force in the Aegean and Asia Minor vacuum – a region of extreme fragmentation and instability. Over a period of less than ten years they came into contact with and served under (either nominally or in reality) some the main powers in the Mediterranean: that is, the Byzantines, Aragonese and the Franco-Angevins. They also fought (undefeated) against two of their supposed overlords (the Angevins and Byzantines), as well as Alan mercenaries and the Turks, with whom they also allied. Ultimately no power was able to fully control the Catalan Company. Although their numbers were not insurmountable, they were a highly effective military unit who proved themselves in Anatolia against Turkish warrior-nomads, in Thrace and Macedonia against Byzantine and Alan armies and in Greece against heavily armoured Frankish cavalry. The western powers rightly considered the Catalans as a potentially valuable proxy force who could be used to further their own objectives in the region, but unfortunately for them, the Catalans were not interested in playing this role unless it came with significant financial reward. The Catalans, for their part, soon realized that they could achieve much more without outside intervention and used their military prowess to carve out a domain for themselves. Ironically, the only people the Catalans had any form of lasting agreement or peace with (with the exception of their Aragonese overlords) were the Anatolian Turkish beyliks, whose establishment in the region and rise to power was very similar. In fact the Ottomans famously gained their foothold in Europe only after they were shipped there by the Byzantines, who had employed them to fight in Thrace during the 1350s – a move which the Catalans had already shown could be disastrous. This is testament to the prominence of irregular proxy groups in any complex and highly fragmented region.

62

For more on this, see Setton, The Catalan Domination of Athens, pp. 14–51; Zachariadou, “The Catalans of Athens and the Beginning of Turkish Expansion in the Aegean Area,” pp. 821–38.

List of Contributors

Douglas Biggs is Professor of History at University of Nebraska-Kearney. Professor Biggs studies late medieval English political, social, and military history. His recent publications include “Kingship and Monarchy, 1066–1485,” for the Oxford Bibliographies Online; Images of America: Ames, with Gloria Betcher (Charleston, SC, 2014), and “‘The Laughing Rolling Stock of the State:’ Ames, Iowa State College, and the Ames & College Railway, 1902–1907,” Annals of Iowa (Spring 2016). Mike Carr is a teaching fellow in medieval history at the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research (London) and the British School at Rome. Dr. Carr works on the crusades and interaction between Latins, Greeks and Turks in the later Middle Ages. His first monograph, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291–1352, was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2015. John France is Professor Emeritus of History at Swansea University, a coeditor of The Journal of Medieval Military History, and the 2015 recipient of De Re Militari’s Bernard Bachrach Prize for Distinguished Service to the Discipline of Medieval Military History. His numerous publications in the field include Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade; Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300; and, most recently, Hattin in the Oxford University Press series Great Battles. Michael S. Fulton recently completed his PhD at Cardiff University. His research focuses on the development of mechanical stone-throwing artillery and fortifications, particularly in the region of the Latin East but also across Europe and around the Mediterranean. A consistent theme throughout his work is the incorporation of archaeological materials, mathematics and other technical tools alongside the traditional documentary sources. His previous publications include an article in this journal on the prefabrication of artillery in the Latin East. David Green is Senior Lecturer in British Studies and History and Chair of British Studies at Harlaxton College. Much of his recent research work centers on two connected themes, the Hundred Years War and later Plantagenet “colonialism.” His most recent publications include The Hundred Years War:

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A People’s History (New Haven, 2014), and “The Statute of Kilkenny (1366): Legislation and the State,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 27 (2014). Donald Kagay received his Ph.D. at Fordham University, under Dr. Joseph O’Callahan. He retired from Albany State University in July, 2015 and currently lectures at the University of Dallas. He has published very widely on medieval legal and military history, with a specialty in the medieval Crown of Aragon. Among his many publications are three books, eight essay collections, and twenty-six refereed articles, including a study of Jaime I of Aragon in volume 8 of The Journal of Medieval Military History. Michael Lower is a specialist in medieval Mediterranean history and the crusades, and teaches at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. His recent publications include “Christian Mercenaries in Muslim Lands: Their Status in Medieval Islamic and Canon Law,” in The Crusader World, ed. Adrian Boas (London, 2015), and “The Papacy and Christian Mercenaries of ThirteenthCentury North Africa,” in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 89 (2014). Alex Mallett is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. He recently published Popular Muslim Reactions to the Franks in the Levant, 1097–1291 (Farnham, 2014). Dr Jochen Schenk is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. His academic interests center on the history of the medieval military orders, crusader and crusading societies, and transcultural history generally. His Templar Families. Landowning Families and the Order of the Temple in France, c. 1120–1307 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. Other recent publications include “Nomadic Violence in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Military Orders,” Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010). L. J. Andrew Villalon is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati, and current president of De Re Militari. He has published extensively not only on late medieval and early modern Spanish history (especially the War of the Two Pedros) but also on the Hundred Years War and the First World War.

Journal of Medieval Military History

Volume I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The Vegetian “Science of Warfare” in the Middle Ages – Clifford J. Rogers Battle Seeking: The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy – Stephen F. Morillo Italia – Bavaria – Avaria: The Grand Strategy behind Charlemagne’s Renovatio Imperii in the West – Charles R. Bowlus The Composition and Raising of the Armies of Charlemagne – John France Some Observations on the Role of the Byzantine Navy in the Success of the First Crusade – Bernard S. Bachrach Besieging Bedford: Military Logistics in 1224 – Emilie M. Amt “To Aid the Custodian and Council”: Edmund of Langley and the Defense of the Realm, June–July 1399 – Douglas Biggs Flemish Urban Militias against the French Cavalry Armies in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries – J. F. Verbruggen (translated by Kelly DeVries)

Volume II The Use of Chronicles in Recreating Medieval Military History – Kelly DeVries Military Service in the County of Flanders – J. F. Verbruggen (translated by Kelly DeVries) 3 Prince into Mercenary: Count Armengol VI of Urgel, 1102–1154 – Bernard F. Reilly 4 Henry II’s Military Campaigns in Wales, 1157–1165 – John Hosler 5 Origins of the Crossbow Industry in England – David S. Bachrach 6 The Bergerac Campaign (1345) and the Generalship of Henry of Lancaster – Clifford J. Rogers 7 A Shattered Circle: Eastern Spanish Fortifications and their Repair during the “Calamitous Fourteenth Century” – Donald Kagay 8 The Militia of Malta – Theresa M. Vann 9 “Up with Orthodoxy!” In Defense of Vegetian Warfare – John B. Gillingham 10 100,000 Crossbow Bolts for the Crusading King of Aragon – Robert Burns 1 2

Volume III 1

A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History – Richard Abels and Stephen F. Morillo

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

War and Sanctity: Saints’ Lives as Sources for Early Medieval Warfare – John France The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne’s Army – Carroll Gillmor The Role of the Cavalry in Medieval Warfare – J. F. Verbruggen Sichelgaita of Salerno: Amazon or Trophy Wife? – Valerie Eads Castilian Military Reform under the Reign of Alfonso XI (1312–50) – Nicolás Agrait Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, 1346–7: Restellou and La Roche Derrien – Clifford J. Rogers Ferrante d’Este’s Letters as a Source for Military History – Sergio Mantovani Provisions for the Ostend Militia on the Defense, August 1436 – Kelly DeVries

Volume IV The Sword of Justice: War and State Formation in Comparative Perspective – Stephen F. Morillo 2 Archery versus Mail: Experimental Archaeology and the Value of Historical Context – Russ Mitchell 3 “Cowardice” and Duty in Anglo-Saxon England – Richard Abels 4 Cowardice and Fear Management: The 1173–74 Conflict as a Case Study – Steven Isaac 5 Expecting Cowardice: Medieval Battle Tactics Reconsidered – Stephen F. Morillo 6 Naval Tactics at the Battle of Zierikzee (1304) in the Light of Mediterranean Praxis – William Sayers 7 The Military Role of the Magistrates in Holland during the Guelders War – James P. Ward 8 Women in Medieval Armies – J. F. Verbruggen 9 Verbruggen’s “Cavalry” and the Lyon-Thesis – Bernard S. Bachrach 10 Dogs of War in Thirteenth-Century Valencian Garrisons – Robert I. Burns

1

Volume V 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8

Literature as Essential Evidence for Understanding Chivalry – Richard W. Kaeuper The Battle of Hattin: A Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold? – Michael Ehrlich Hybrid or Counterpoise? A Study of Transitional Trebuchets – Michael Basista The Struggle between the Nicaean Empire and the Bulgarian State (1254–1256): Towards a Revival of Byzantine Military Tactics under Theodore II Laskaris – Nicholas S. Kanellopoulos and Joanne K. Lekea A “Clock-and-Bow” Story: Late Medieval Technology from Monastic Evidence – Mark Dupuy The Strength of Lancastrian Loyalism during the Readeption: Gentry Participation at the Battle of Tewkesbury – Malcolm Mercer Soldiers and Gentlemen: The Rise of the Duel in Renaissance Italy – Stephen Hughes “A Lying Legacy” Revisited: The Abels-Morillo Defense of Discontinuity – Bernard S. Bachrach

Volume VI 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Cultural Representation and the Practice of War in the Middle Ages – Richard Abels The Brevium Exempla as a Source for Carolingian Warhorses – Carroll Gillmor Infantry and Cavalry in Lombardy (11th–12th Centuries) – Aldo Settia Unintended Consumption: The Interruption of the Fourth Crusade at Venice and its Consequences – Greg Bell Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Horse Archers, Oh My! What Abstract Definitions Don’t Tell Us about 1205 Adrianople – Russ Mitchell War Financing in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon – Donald Kagay National Reconciliation in France at the end of the Hundred Years War – Christopher Allmand

Volume VII The Military Role of the Order of the Garter – Richard W. Barber The Itineraries of the Black Prince’s Chevauchées of 1355 and 1356: Observations and Interpretations – Peter Hoskins 3 The Chevauchée of John Chandos and Robert Knolles: Early March to Early June, 1369 – Nicolas Savy 4 “A Voyage, or Rather an Expedition, to Portugal”: Edmund of Langley’s Journey to Iberia, June/July 1381 – Douglas Biggs 5 The Battle of Aljubarrota (1385): A Reassessment – João Gouveia Monteiro 6 “Military” Knighthood in the Lancastrian Era: The Case of Sir John Montgomery – Gilbert Bogner 7 Medieval Romances and Military History: Marching Orders in Jean de Bueil’s Le Jouvencel introduit aux armes – Matthieu Chan Tsin 8 Arms and the Art of War: The Ghentenaar and Brugeois Militia in 1477–79 – J. F. Verbruggen 9 Accounting for Service at War: The Case of Sir James Audley of Heighley – Nicholas Gribit 10 The Black Prince in Gascony and France (1355–6), according to MS 78 of Corpus Christi College, Oxford – Clifford J. Rogers 1 2

Volume VIII 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

People against Mercenaries: The Capuchins in Southern Gaul – John France The Last Italian Expedition of Henry IV: Re–reading the Vita Mathildis of Donizone of Canossa – Valerie Eads Jaime I of Aragon: Child and Master of the Spanish Reconquest – Donald Kagay Numbers in Mongol Warfare – Carl Sverdrup Battlefield Medicine in Wolfram’s Parzival – Jolyon T. Hughes Battle-Seeking, Battle-Avoiding or Perhaps Just Battle-Willing? Applying the Gillingham Paradigm to Enrique II of Castile – L. J. Andrew Villalon Outrance and Plaisance – Will McLean Guns and Goddams: Was there a Military Revolution in Lancastrian Normandy 1415–50? – Anne Curry

9

The Name of the Siege Engine Trebuchet: Etymology and History in Medieval France and Britain – William Sayers

Volume IX 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8

9

The French Offensives of 1404–1407 Against Anglo-Gascon Aquitaine – Guilhem Pépin The King’s Welshmen: Welsh Involvement in the Expeditionary Army of 1415 – Adam Chapman Gunners, Aides and Archers: The Personnel of the English Ordnance Companies in Normandy in the Fifteenth Century – Andy King Defense, Honor and Community: the Military and Social Bonds of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Flemish Shooting Guilds – Laura Crombie The Battle of Edgecote or Banbury (1469) Through the Eyes of Contemporary Welsh Poets – Barry Lewis Descriptions of Battles in Fifteenth-Century Urban Chronicles: A Comparison of the Siege of London in May 1471 and the Battle of Grandson, 2 March 1476 – Andreas Remy Urban Espionage and Counterespionage during the Burgundian Wars (1468–77) – Bastian Walter Urban Militias, Nobles and Mercenaries: The Organization of the Antwerp Army in the Flemish–Brabantine Revolt of the 1480s – Frederik Buylaert, Jan Van Camp and Bert Verwerft Military Equipment in the Town of Southampton During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries – Randall Moffett

Volume X 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The Careers of Justinian’s Generals – David Parnell Early Saxon Frontier Warfare: Henry I, Otto I, and Carolingian Military Institutions – David S. Bachrach and Bernard S. Bachrach War in The Lay of the Cid – Francisco Garcia Fitz The Battle of Salado (1340) Revisited – Nicolás Agrait Chivalry and Military Biography in the Later Middle Ages: The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis of Bourbon – Steven Muhlberger The Ottoman-Hungarian Campaigns of 1442 – John Jefferson Security and Insecurity, Spies and Informers in Holland during the Guelders War (1506–1515) –James P. Ward Edward I’s Wars in the Chronicle of Hagnaby Priory – Michael Prestwich

Volume XI 1 2 3

Military Games and the Training of the Infantry – Aldo A. Settia The Battle of Civitate: A Plausible Account – Charles D. Stanton The Square “Fighting March” of the Crusaders at the Battle of Ascalon (1099) – Georgios Theotokis

4

How the Crusades Could Have Been Won: King Baldwin II of Jerusalem’s Campaigns against Aleppo (1124–5) and Damascus (1129) – T. S. Asbridge 5 Saint Catherine’s Day Miracle – the Battle of Montgisard – Michael Ehrlich 6 The Military Effectiveness of Alan Mercenaries in Byzantium, 1301–1306 – Scott Jesse and Anatoly Isaenko 7 Winning and Recalling Honor in Spain: Pro-English Poetry in Celebration of the Battle of Nájera (1367) – Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon 8 The Wars and the Army of the Duke of Cephalonia Carlo I Tocco (c. 1375–1429) – Savvas Kyriakidis 9 Sir John Radcliffe, K. G. (d. 1441): Miles Famossissimus – A. Compton Reeves 10 Defense Schemes of Southampton in the Late Medieval Period, 1300–1500 – Randall Moffett 11 French and English Acceptance of Medieval Gunpowder Weaponry – Kelly DeVries

Volume XII 1

Some Observations Regarding Barbarian Military Demography: Geiseric’s Census of 429 and Its Implications – Bernard S. Bachrach 2 War Words and Battle Spears: The kesja and kesjulag in Old Norse Literature – K. James McMullen 3 The Political and Military Agency of Ecclesiastical Leaders in Anglo-Norman England: 1066–1154 – Craig M. Nakashian 4 Couched Lance and Mounted Shock Combat in the East: The Georgian Experience – Mamuka Tsurtsumia 5 The Battle of Arsur: A Short-Lived Victory – Michael Ehrlich 6 Prelude to Kephissos (1311): An Analysis of the Battle of Apros (1305) – Nikolaos S. Kanellopoulos and Ioanna K. Lekea 7 Horse Restoration (Restaurum Equorum) in the Army of Henry of Grosmont, 1345: A Benefit of Military Service in the Hundred Years’ War – Nicholas A. Gribit 8 The Indenture between Edward III and the Black Prince for the Prince’s Expedition to Gascony, 10 July 1355 – Mollie M. Madden 9 Investigating the Socio-Economic Origins of English Archers in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century – Gary Baker 10 War and the Great Schism: Military Factors Determining Allegiances in Iberia – L. J. Andrew Villalon

Volume XIII 1 2 3 4 5

Feudalism, Romanticism, and Source Criticism: Writing the Military History of Salian Germany – David S. Bachrach When the Lamb Attacked the Lion: A Danish Attack on England in 1138? – Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm Development of Prefabricated Artillery during the Crusades – Michael S. Fulton Some Notes on Ayyubid and Mamluk Military Terms – Rabei G. Khamisy Helgastaðir, 1220: A Battle of No Significance? – Oren Falk

6

Por la guarda de la mar: Castile and the Struggle for the Sea in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries – Nicolás Agrait 7 The Battle of Hyddgen, 1401: Owain Glyndwr’s Victory Reconsidered – Michael Livingston 8 The Provision of Artillery for the 1428 Expedition to France – Dan Spencer 9 1471: The Year of Three Battles and English Gunpowder Artillery – Devin Fields 10 “Cardinal Sins” and “Cardinal Virtues” of “El Tercer Rey,” Pedro González de Mendoza: The Many Faces of a Warrior Churchman in Late Medieval Europe – L. J. Andrew Villalon 11 Late Medieval Divergences: Comparative Perspectives on Early Gunpowder Warfare in Europe and China – Tonio Andrade

De Re Militari and the Journal of Medieval Military History De re militari: Society for the Study of Medieval Military History (DRM) was founded in 1992 during the annual International Congress for Medieval Studies meeting at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Our organization takes its name from the military treatise by Flavius Renatus Vegetius, the famous Roman work. From its beginning, the Society has had its most significant presence at the Congress, where each year it holds its annual meetings and sponsors a number of sessions, as well as a special lecture delivered by a distinguished medieval military historian. In addition, the society has sponsored sessions at other conferences, including the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK, and the annual meeting of the Society for Military History (SMH). DRM maintains a website which has become a principal online source for scholarly information about warfare in the Middle Ages, easily available for use by scholars and students in the United States and abroad. On this website, the organization hosts many primary sources, articles, and dissertations, as well as an extensive book review section. The Society’s Journal of Medieval Military History (JMMH), founded in 2003, is published annually by Boydell & Brewer. It is very much in the interests of both the field of medieval military history, and scholars within that field, to support DRM and the JMMH. Consequently, we encourage scholars to take out membership. At the time of writing, the annual dues for DRM membership are $35 (if paid by check or money order); $38 (if paid by credit card). Payment should be made to the treasurer (or his/her delegate), if at all possible by check or money order: please see the website for further details, www.deremilitari.org. A DRM membership includes: one hardcover copy of the annual JMMH the right to serve as an officer of DRM the right to vote in all elections of officers and on all issues relevant to the society preference in participating on panels sponsored by DRM the right to compete for the Gillingham Prize annually awarded to the best article in the JMMH the right to buy earlier copies of the JMMH at a reduced price. Those renewing their membership or joining for the first time can obtain an application form via the De re militari site at the following URL: www:// deremilitari.org/society/drm-membership-form/ L. J. Andrew Villalon President, De Re Militari (2014–2017)

spine 28mm

CONTENTS Michael S. Fulton David Green Donald J. Kagay Douglas Biggs L. J. Andrew Villalon

Anglo-Norman Artillery in Narrative Histories, from the Reign of William I to the Minority of Henry III Imperial Policy and Military Practice in the Plantagenet Dominions, c.1337–c.1453 The Parliament of the Crown of Aragon as Military Financier in the War of the Two Pedros Chasing the Chimera in Spain: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82 Note: A Medieval City under Threat Turns Its Coat, while Hedging Its Bets – Burgos Faces an Invasion in Spring 1366 Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval Warfare*

Michael Lower John France Alex Mallett

Jochen G. Schenk Mike Carr

Medieval European Mercenaries in North Africa: The Value of Difference Medieval Irregular Warfare, c.1000–1300 Muslim Responses to Western Intervention: A Comparative Study of the Crusades and Post-2003 Iraq “New Wars” and Medieval Warfare: Some Terminological Considerations Friend or Foe? The Catalan Company as Proxy Actors in the Aegean and Asia Minor Vacuum

* The second section of this volume comprises a set of articles based on papers presented in 2015 at a workshop organized by the University of Glasgow on “Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces in Medieval and Early-Modern Warfare.” This was part of a series of workshops funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the topic of “Proxy Actors and Irregular Forces: The Past and Future of Warfare.”

FRANCE, DEVRIES, ROGERS (editors)

Cover: Coll. Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry, MS13, fo. 105r (circa 1170–1190). The Italian artist who illuminated this copy of Gratian’s Decretum beautifully captured the deadly seriousness of medieval warfare – for townsmen as well as knights. Image used by generous permission of the Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry.

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY VIII JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

The Journal’s hallmark is broad chronological, geographic and thematic coverage of the subject, bearing witness to ‘the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterises the field’.  HISTORY

XIV

J ournal of

MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

·  X IV · Edited by JOHN FRANCE, KELLY DEVRIES and CLIFFORD J. ROGERS