Life in a Medieval Castle (18 page)

The castle lord who dubbed Percival, depicted as a naive young savage from Wales, told him:

With this sword [I have given you] the highest Order

That God has made and commanded:

It is the Order of Chivalry

Which should be without taint [vilenie].

Percival was admonished to spare the vanquished enemy who asked grace, to assist maidens and women in distress, to pray in church regularly, and not to talk too much—this
last evidently a reflection on the knightly inclination to boast.

Many thirteenth-century knights, including William Marshal, themselves composed verses. It was a poor knight who could not read and write. One romance credits its noble young hero with learning Latin and astronomy from a tutor who “attended his pupil everywhere, took him to school, prevented him from eating too much, taught him polite language and good manners, and never left him even when he dressed or went to bed.”

Despite precepts, codes, and admonitions from the Church, however, the knight’s life was normally lived on a lower plane than that embodied by the chivalric ideal. The reason was that the great majority of knights were, horse and armor aside, penniless. The system of primogeniture left younger sons even of great families without fiefs, and so without income. These young men were sent out into the world with the training and equipment for a single profession, that of arms. The normal business of the knight was war, and often as a mercenary. By the twelfth century, the practice of hiring knights was well established, and even if a knight served his liege lord as part of a feudal levy, the thought of gain was in the forefront of his mind. One of young William Marshal’s first lessons, immediately following his initiation into battle at Drincourt, was an exercise in economics. That night at dinner, William of Mandeville, earl of Essex, who had shared command with the chamberlain during the battle, ironically asked William for a small present out of his spoils—“just a crupper or an old horse-collar…surely you won forty or sixty horses today?” Embarrassed, William had to admit that not only had he failed to seize the opportunity of booty, but he had even lost his own horse. A few days later there was a tournament that William, horseless, could not enter. At the last moment William’s tutor provided him with a horse. The young man fought three victorious combats, and took
care to exact horses, arms, armor, baggage, and ransom money.

Many years later William Marshal, as regent for young Henry III, defeated Prince Louis of France and rebel English barons at Lincoln. Roger of Wendover, in his chronicle
Flowers of History
, reports that William allowed his men to do much more than seize enemy horses and treasure-laden wagons:

The whole city was plundered to the last farthing, and then they proceeded to rob all the churches throughout the city, breaking open all the chests and cupboards with hatchets and hammers, and seizing gold and silver, cloth of all colors, women’s ornaments, gold rings, goblets, and precious stones. When at last they had carried off all kinds of merchandise so that nothing remained untouched in any corner of the houses, they all returned to their own lords rich men. When the peace of King Henry had been proclaimed throughout the city by all, they feasted and drank and made merry.

The Provençal poet Bertrand de Born wrote lyrically about war—its pageantry, its excitement, and its booty:

…I love to see,

Amid the meadows, tents and pavilions spread out,

And it gives me great joy to see

Drawn up on the field

Knights and horses in battle array,

And it delights me when the scouts

Scatter people and herds in their path…

Maces, swords, helms of different colors,

Shields that will be riven and shattered

When the fight begins;

Many vassals struck down together,

And the horses of the dead and wounded

Roving at random…

I tell you I find no such savor

In food, or in wine, or in sleep,

As in hearing the shout “On! On!”

From both sides, and the neighing of steeds

That have lost their riders,

And the cries of “Help! Help!”

In seeing men great and small go down

On the grass beyond the castle moat;

In seeing at last the dead,

The pennoned stumps of lances

Still in their sides.

Bertrand, who personally stirred up so much strife between great feudal lords that Dante awarded him a special place in Hell, with his head permanently severed from his body, was explicit about the material reasons for “finding no pleasure in peace”:

Why do I want

The rich to hate each other?

Because a rich man is much more

Noble, generous and affable

In war than in peace.

And again:

We are going to have some fun.

For the barons will make much of us…

If they want us to remain with them,

They will give us money.

To the soldier’s pay will be added loot:

Trumpet, drums, flags and pennons,

Standards of horses white and black—

This is what we shall shortly see.

And it will be a happy day,

For we shall seize the usurers’ goods,

And pack animals will no longer pass in safety,

Or the burgher journey without fear,

Or the merchant on his way to France,

But the man full of courage will be rich.

Addressing himself to the count of Poitiers, Bertrand offered his services: “I can help you. I have already a shield at my neck and a helm on my head…Nevertheless, how can I put myself in the field without money?”

A similarly enthusiastic attitude toward war was expressed by a Welsh chronicler describing a campaign of Prince Llywelyn in 1220 in which he stormed and razed two castles, burned the town of Haverford, and “went round Rhos and Deugleddyv in five days, making vast slaughter of the people of the country. And after making a truce…he returned home happy and joyful.”

Of all sources of knightly enrichment, the ransom of wealthy prisoners was the foremost. Following a battle in the
chanson
of
Girart de Roussillon,
Girart and his followers casually put to the sword all their penniless prisoners, but spared the “owners of castles.” Ransom of an important personage could reach astronomical figures—like the “king’s ransom” of Richard I when he was captured by Leopold of Austria and turned over to Emperor Henry VI: 150,000 marks (several million dollars in twentieth-century American currency), which had to be raised by special taxes levied in both England and Normandy, on knights, laymen, clergy, churches, monasteries. The sum could not be raised, and when Richard was freed, he had to give hostages for the remaining debt.

In France the peace established in the thirteenth century under Louis IX left many knights without a field of action. Numbers of them went to the East as members of the two Crusading orders, the Temple and the Hospital; others went to Spain and Portugal. Their intention was, of course, to fight the Saracen infidels, but it did not always work out that way. Even the Cid, epic hero of Spanish chivalry, spent considerable time in the employ of the infidels, leading expeditions for the Moorish king of Saragossa against Christian princes. For poor knights dependent on their swords for their livelihood, one employer was as good as another.
Girart de Roussillon
paints a sad picture of the knight when peace has come—his income cut off, and the moneylender after him. Girart and his wife, roaming the countryside, meet some merchants restored to prosperity by the
peace that has ruined Girart. They find it prudent to conceal Girart’s identity, and his wife tells the merchants he is dead. “God be praised,” says one, “for he was always making war and through him we have suffered many ills.” Frustrated Girart wishes he could cut the fellow down with one blow of his good sword, but he no longer has it.

In the lean times of peace there remained one source of action and possible gain: the tournament. Historically an outgrowth of old pagan games, taken over like so many other pagan institutions by the early Middle Ages and accorded a Christian coloration, the tournament had by the thirteenth century evolved its own rules and formalities. Great lords and princes organized tournaments for their own entertainment and that of their friends, and to show off their wealth. The principal feature was a mock battle between groups of knights from different regions. Heralds were sent around the countryside to proclaim the tournament, and on the appointed day the knights donned their armor, mounted their horses, and lined up at opposite ends of a level meadow. At a flourish from a herald, the two bands of horsemen charged at each other. The field was open-ended, because when one team was defeated and sought to retreat, the other, exactly as in real war, pursued it through wood and dale to capture prisoners. When it was all over, the defeated knights had to arrange with their captors for their ransom, usually the value of horse and armor, redeemed by a money payment. William Marshal and another knight made a two-year tour of France attending tournaments, in one ten-month period capturing 103 knights and doing a profitable business in ransoms.

There were also prizes, sometimes for several categories of prowess. William Marshal once won a fish, a pike of unusual size. The knights who delivered it found William at the blacksmith’s, down on his knees, his head on the anvil, while the smith labored to release him from his helmet,
which had gotten turned around backwards from a lance’s blow.

Until the latter part of the fourteenth century, there was little individual jousting. The tournament was essentially training for war, and the mass melee intentionally resembled a real battle. The combative ardor of the participants was often very akin to the spirit of genuine war, especially if knightly loyalties were enlisted. Serious and even fatal injuries were common. At one tournament William Marshal’s son Gilbert was exhibiting his skill at horsemanship when the bridle broke. Gilbert was tumbled from the saddle and, catching one foot in the stirrup, was dragged across the field and fatally injured. After the accident, the tournament degenerated into a brawl in which one of Gilbert’s retainers was killed and many knights and squires were badly wounded. A decade later a tournament near Rochester ended with English squires belaboring the defeated French knights with sticks and clubs.

The earliest English tournaments had been licensed by the king, but Henry III consistently opposed them. William Marshal forbade one in Henry’s name in 1217, and thereafter the prohibitions multiplied, but they were so ineffectual that according to the monastic chronicler of the
Annals of Dunstable,
“tourneyers, their aiders and abettors, and those who carried merchandise or provisions to tournaments were ordered to be excommunicated, all together, regularly every Sunday.”

The tournament at which Gilbert Marshal was killed had been forbidden by the king—a fact which Henry pointed out to Walter Marshal when the latter claimed his brother’s inheritance: “And you too, Walter, who against my wish and notwithstanding my prohibition, and in contempt of me, were present at the tournament…on what grounds do you demand your inheritance?” Walter’s protests that he could not leave his brother did not soften
the king’s anger, but the intercession of the bishop of Durham finally brought about a reconciliation.

Aside from the fear that the king expressed when he canceled two tournaments in 1247 between knights of his own French province of Poitou and those of his English domain (he was afraid, in the words of Matthew Paris, that “after the spears were shivered, bloody swords might flash forth”), Henry III regarded tournaments as pretexts for conspiracy by the barons. In several cases these mock wars were closely connected with baronial uprisings. On the occasion of an abortive rising at Stamford in 1229 after Henry’s coming of age, the barons involved rode off to Chepstow with William Marshal II for a tournament, only to be confronted with a writ by the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, forbidding the meeting. Seventy-three more prohibitions were recorded in the ensuing three decades. Several times knights holding tournaments had their lands seized. On one occasion the king’s brother, William de Valence, urged his knightly companions to defy the king’s order and hold a tournament, which was only prevented by a heavy fall of snow. A little later William staged the tournament and succeeded in severely wounding a fellow knight.

The Church joined Henry in its opposition, not only because of the violence of the combats and the danger of sedition. Besides such innocent auxiliary sports as wrestling, dart shooting, lance hurling, and stone throwing, the tournaments were famous for eating, drinking, and lovemaking. Jacques de Vitry, the Paris preacher renowned for the acerbity of his sermons, liked to use the tournament to illustrate all seven of the deadly sins. The Church’s strictures were not very effective. Jocelin of Brakelond records how Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds forbade a band of young knights to hold a tournament and went so far as to lock the town gates to keep them from the field. Next day, on the Feast of Peter and Paul, the young men
foreswore combat and came to dine with the abbot. But after dinner, sending for more wine, they caroused, sang, ruined the abbot’s afternoon nap, and finally marched out, broke open the town gates, and held their tournament. The abbot excommunicated the lot.

In the 1250s a milder form of combat, known in England as a Round Table (named after King Arthur’s assemblies), anticipated the tournaments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, replacing the mass melee with adversaries in single combat with blunted weapons. Such meetings were usually preceded by feasting and games. But even the Round Tables could be lethal. In 1252 Matthew Paris recorded the death of Arnold de Montigny in a joust with Roger de Lemburn, which brought suspicion of murder because the iron point of Roger’s lance, when drawn from the dead man’s throat, was found not to have been blunted as it should have been. Further, Roger had previously wounded Arnold in a tournament. Matthew concluded, “But God only knows the truth of this, who alone searches into the secrets of men’s hearts.”