Aspects of War in the Late Middle Ages

Christopher Allmand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000576528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

This Variorum collection of articles is intended to illustrate that conflict in the late Middle Ages was not only about soldiers and fighting (about the makers and the making of war), important as these were. Just as it remains in our own day, war was a subject which attracted writers (commentators, moralists and social critics among them), some of whom glorified war, while others did not. For the historian the written word is important evidence of how war, and those taking part in it, might be regarded by the wider society. One question was supremely important: what was the standing among their contemporaries of those who fought society's wars? How was war seen on the moral scale of the time? The last two sections deal with a particular war, the 'occupation' of northern France by the English between 1420 and 1450. The men who conquered the duchy, and then served to keep it under English control for those years, had to be rewarded with lands, titles, administrative and military responsibilities, even (for the clergy) ecclesiastical benefices. For these, war spelt 'opportunity', whose advantages they would be reluctant to surrender. The final irony lies in the fact that Frenchmen, returning to claim their ancestral rights once the English had been driven out, frequently found it difficult to unravel both the legal and the practical consequences of a war which had caused a considerable upheaval in Norman society over a period of a single generation. (CS 1106).

Part I

1 A ROMAN TEXT ON WAR The Strategemata of Frontinus in the Middle Ages

DOI: 10.4324/9780429317859-3

The military literature available to men of the Middle Ages was dominated by and, consequently, hugely dependent upon two classical texts, the Strategemata of Frontinus, compiled late in the first century, and the De re militari of Vegetius, written probably in the late fourth or early fifth century. Of these, the more significant was the work of Vegetius, whose influence developed steadily (and not always in a narrow military direction) as time progressed. That, however, is no reason for failing to acknowledge Frontinus, the importance of whose work Vegetius himself recognised in fulsome terms¹ and which was to bequeath the medieval world a rich seam of exempla from which to mine information and ideas regarding military practice in the classical past which might be useful to later generations.

1 Vegetius, De re militari (hereafter DRM), II, 3.

The career of Sextus Julius Frontinus (c. AD 35–103) was one of public service, both civil and military. The holder of high office in Rome under a number of emperors, he also served in the army in Germany and in Britain, where he was governor from c. AD 76 to 78. His practical experience as Rome’s water commissioner was reflected in his De aquis urbis Romae, which describes the system of aqueducts bringing water to the city. Written some years earlier was a work on military science, now lost, to which the Strategemata, composed after AD 84, provided the evidence of stratagems taken from ‘utraque lingua’, ‘both languages’, Greek as well as Latin. It is this work whose fortune and significance this essay will attempt to trace.²

2 Ivli Frontini Strategemata, ed. R. I. Ireland (Leipzig, 1990). Both Frontinus’ works are available in English translation in a single volume: Frontinus, The Stratagems and the Aqueducts of Rome, trans. C. E. Bennett (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1969). Both texts in a single manuscript may be found in Paris, BnF., nouv. acq. lat. 626.

In an introductory statement, Frontinus told his readers how it came into being. He had, he explained, already written a work on military science (res militaris), reducing its practices to a system. However, he felt the need to provide a complementary work which would supply examples of the teachings and recommendations to which he had given prominence in his lost work. The title was to be a Greek one, ‘a collection of examples of wisdom and foresight’ to inspire commanders and to show them that, if modelled on those offered, their own stratagems were likely to be effective. Encouraged by a desire to save the time of busy men and at the same time underlining the utilitarian nature of the text, he was setting out a series of situations providing real-life historical situations taken from the writings of past authors, among whom Caesar and Livy stand out.

With Frontinus, the reader constantly faces the problem of how to get the better of the enemy who seldom appears to be far away. This creates a certain tension in the reader’s mind, which is preoccupied by one fundamental question: how, with minimum risk and danger, to emerge victorious from any encounter with the enemy. The successful commander is kept informed and up to date through the use of spies (a theme which will reoccur regularly in the pages which follow), for it is important to be as well informed as possible about the enemy’s plans, movements, numbers and capabilities. Foreknowledge gives a commander a hidden hold over his rival: he can use it, for example, in a surprise attack which catches the enemy unprepared; the state of unreadiness is the one which every commander must do his utmost to avoid falling into. Likewise, emphasis is placed upon the need to take full advantage of any mistake made by the enemy: the Latin word occasio, which we can translate as ‘opportunity’, sums up the need for the leaders of men to be ready to take advantage of any mistake made by the enemy which can lead to one side acquiring an advantage, whether physical or psychological, over the other. The reader of these texts will be impressed by the emphasis which each places upon human reaction to a given situation, and how fear can so easily take over as the guiding influence towards determining which emerges the victor from a meeting between rival armies or forces.

Intended, in its author’s view, to complement his own analysis of ways of getting the better of opponents, Frontinus’ Strategemata consists of some 581 short descriptions of military events or episodes, most only a few lines long. Set out under broad headings in four books and referred to, perhaps significantly, as ‘exempla’ in both Oxford, Lincoln College, lat. 100,³ and in Lambeth Palace, 752, or as ‘Dicta ad exempla ducum in bello’ in Vatican Library, Pal. Lat. 1571, together they illustrate points made in his earlier work, so teaching by way of historical example why successes (and, in some cases, failures) occurred. The importance of this approach lay in the author’s confidence that war was a science which could be reduced to sets of general principles to guide and help commanders as they prepared to confront the enemy, either in open battle or at a siege. It reflected a not unreasonable view that the recollection of a past event (the recalling of a stratagem involving deceit, for example) could inspire a general to emulate it in the likelihood that, successful once, it might be so again. Such an understanding of the value of studying past events and the application of the messages which they conveyed led men to study accounts of wars which would provide the answers to recurring military problems. In brief, history had much to teach the contemporary world. The vehicle for the transmission of that knowledge or experience was the written word which, in due course, assumed something akin to an authoritative influence upon the subject.⁴

3 ‘De exemplis rei militaris’. The work was also given titles such as De re militari, De instructione bellorum, Liber artis militaris and Rei militaris strategematicon. 4 On this subject, see Vegetius, DRM, I, 8.

Without an associated text, however, the impact of the Strategemata was greatly diminished. As Frontinus had been at pains to point out, it was not in itself a work of original thought but a large collection of excerpts recalling past experience, diligently drawn up under practical headings, to bolster a work now lost. While the Strategemata offered evidence of Frontinus’ sound military sense, of his reading of certain authors, of his ability to put together a dossier, and of his appreciation of how descriptions of past events might be used to encourage those in similar situations in the future, these characteristics alone did not convey bestseller status. Its chance of becoming a useful compendium lay in forming an association with another work to replace the one lost. Only thus could this collection of pièces justificatives acquire the authority it needed to become, in any real sense, a valuable tool.

In due course, this necessary association was to occur. When, some four centuries later, Vegetius – like Frontinus a state servant but, unlike him, never a soldier – came to write his De re militari, he breathed new life into many of the aspects of the fighting of war to which Frontinus had already given prominence. Placing himself firmly in a long tradition of military writers, going back to the Greeks and including Cato the Censor, Cornelius Celsus and Frontinus, Vegetius underlined themes to which Frontinus had given prominence. These included the importance of proper preparation and planning, and the emphasis to be placed upon defeating the enemy not through the weight of numbers but by outwitting him by gaining access to his plans and being ready to use deceit. Stress was also placed upon the need to maintain the morale of the fighting man, and on the important role which the general had in maintaining it. In short, much of what Frontinus had written, which Vegetius was to pick up from him and others who had contributed to the literary expression of the Roman military tradition, was centred upon the need for a thoughtful and human approach to conflict, involving real leadership. The general who planned and anticipated was more likely to leave the battlefield the victor than he who failed in these respects.

Time was needed for such ideas to take root in a changing world, but it is likely that they influenced the emperor Maurice when he compiled his Strategikon in the sixth or early seventh century. It is probable, too, that readers in the West eventually came to regard the Strategemata as the text which should be partnered with the De re militari of Vegetius. If the Strategemata was a reflection of what Frontinus had taught in his lost work, then it is likely that the two writers and their texts had much in common in their approach to war. With the principles set out by Vegetius, men could turn to Frontinus for the evidence, drawn from the historians, reflecting human experience (which made the evidence all the more credible) in support of Vegetian teaching. Moreover, the respect given to one text descended from the ancient world was likely to be increased if its proposals were associated with and supported by another from the same era. Together they offered the distilled wisdom of the ancient world on military matters. In the eyes of many medieval readers, the works of Frontinus and Vegetius were complementary, each benefiting from its association with the other.

Of 120 or so more or less complete manuscripts of the Strategemata (the oldest and best being London, BL, Harley 2666, probably copied in eastern France about 840), one-third or so were to be linked physically to the De re militari. Evidence suggests that, by early in the second millennium, men were already associating one with the other. Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, 101 shows how the two texts had already been brought together as early as the ninth century. Later, in both Oxford, Lincoln College, lat. 100⁵ and Escorial, O, iii, 9, one text followed the other without a break, while in Lambeth Palace, 752, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F. 3, 1, Vatican Library, Urb. Lat. 1221, Vat. lat. 7227, and Paris, BnF, lat. 7243, both texts were copied by the same scribe. In its own way, each manuscript suggests how the two works were seen as united in their content in the mind of the scribe and/or his patron.

5 Probably copied at Malmesbury Abbey, and corrected in the hand of William of Malmesbury.

Whether single-text or linked to the De re militari, copies of the Strategemata increased considerably in the fourteenth century and even more markedly in the fifteenth century, which wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Index