The Legend of Bouvines

War, Religion and Culture

in the Middle Ages
l

GEORGES DUBY 1/1

Translated by Catherine Tihanyi

J
f

Polity Press
 II
This English translation © Polity Press, 1990'
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.
Contents
First published as Le dimanche de Bouvines © Gallimard, 1973.

This translation first published 1990 by Polity Press

in association with Basil Blackwell

Editorial office:
Polity Press, 65 Bridge Street, Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the Acknowledgments Vi
purposes of criticism and review, I}o part of this publication may be vu
Translator's Acknowledgments
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
Sunday July 27, 1214 1
otherwise, without- the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the THE EVENT 11
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, The Stage and the Cast 13
hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent The Day 37
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed COMMENTARY 55
on the subsequent purchaser. Peace 57
War 76
ISBN 0 7456 0550 8 The Battle 110
Victory 122
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
THE LEGEND 139
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library. Birth of the Myth 141
Resurgences 167

APPENDICES 181
Chronology 183
Select Bibliography 188
Documents 192
Typeset in 10 Y2 on 12 pt Sabon
by Hope Services (Abingdon) Ltd. Index 226
Printed in Great Britain by
T. J. Press Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
I:"'""'""""'--~---~-~-~~~~-~- --------~- --- ---
Acknowledgments
The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission
to reproduce illustrations: plates 1 and 10, photograph © Photo-
graphie Giraudon, Paris; plate 2, photograph © Boubonel; plates 3
and 11, photograph © Cliche des Musees Nationaux, Paris; plates 4
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f
and 5, Archives Nationales, Paris; plate 6, Winchester Cathedral
Library, the Dean and Chapter of Winchester; plate 7, photograph
© Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; plate ,8, The Master
and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; plate 9, photo-
graph © Roger Guillemot-C.D.A. © Edimedia; plate 12, photograph
© Estates ].E. Bulloz; plates 12, 13, and 14, Bibliotheque Nationale,
Paris; plate 16, Musee des Arts et Traditions Populaires, Paris.
I
Translator's Acknowledgments
The translator would like to express her heartfelt gratitude to
Georges Duby for his kind encouragement and his patience in answering
questions, as well as to Linda Amy Kimball for the many discussions
on the translation process and historical linguistics which were
particularly helpful in tackling the translation of the Old French
documents and for her help with the copy-editing of the manuscript.
In addition the translator would like to express her thanks to Omega
Scientific, who very ably copy-edited the manuscript on behalf of
Polity Press, as well as Philippa Hurd and Alison Kelly who
respectively supervised the translation and the production of this
book.
'. Sunday July 27, 1214

In the year 1214, July 27 fell on a Sunday. Sunday is the clay of the
Lord. It is owed Him in its entirety. I have known peasants who still
trembled a little when bad weather forced them to harvest on Sunday:
they were aware that the wrath of heaven was upon them. Thirteenth-
century parishioners perceived this wrath to be much more
threatening. The priest of their church not only forbade manuallabor
on that day, he also tried to convince them to totally purify dominical
time, to guard it from the three pollutants: money, sex, and spilt
blood. That is why, at that time, no one willingly handled deniers on
Surrday, That is why on that day husbands, if they were pious,
avoided coming too close to their wives, and men of arms, if they
were pious, avoided drawing their swords.
And yet onSunday July 27, 1214, thousands of warriors broke the
ban. They fought, and fought intensely, near the bridge of Bouvines in
Flanders. They were led by kings: the King of Germany and the King
of France. Entrusted by God to maintain the order of the world,
consecrated by bishops, half priests themselves, the kings, more so
than anyone else, ought to have respected the prescriptions of the
Church. Nonetheless on that day they dared to attack each other, call
their. companions to arms, and engage in strife - not a simple skirmish
but a battle, a real battle. Moreover, it was the first battle that the
King of France had ventured to fight in more than a century. And
finally, the victory God gave to those he loved was splendid, more so
than any that could be remembered. It was a triumph worthy of
Caesar or of the Emperor Charles of the epics.
For all these reasons, the half-harvested fields of Bouvines were on
that day the locus of a memorable event. Events are like the foam of
history, bubbles large or small that burst at che surface and whose
2 SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214
rupture triggers waves that travel varying distances. This one has left
very enduring traces that are not yet completely erased today. It is
those traces that bestow existence upon it. Outside of them, the event
is nothing, and it is thus with them that this book is essentially
concerned.
There are two kinds of traces. One kind comprises traces in
motion, widespread and countless, residing clearly or hazily, firmly or
fleetingly, in the memory of the men and women of our time. If the
remembrance of Bouvines has not yet been completely lost, it is
because it has been carefully maintained. I can still see a picture from
my first history book depicting, struggling on the ground and half
caught beneath a fallen horse, a sort of large beetle with fleurs-de-lis
painted on its wing-sheets. Its head was enclosed in a metal box and
from all sides lances and hooks were threatening it. It was explained
to me that this was the King of France and that, despite everything, he
was going to win. This picture was seen by every French person of
my age when they were-eight or ten years old and also by everyone
who attended school in the first forty years of the twentieth century
and the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth. Previously, the word
Bouvines had been unceasingly heard in cavalry quarters and in the
Great Army's camps. Emblem for squadrons, passwords whispered
by sentries, it was the name of a victory inserted by each succeeding
generation, in its place between Tolbiac and Marignan, on the thread
of a long litany of propriation, elation, reassurance, and consolation.
The echoes of these patriotic fanfares have yet to fully die out, but
they were a little more audible when the plan for the series to which
this book belongs, Thirty Days that Made France, was laid down.
The story of Bouvines is included as. the sole happy military event
along with Poitiers. It would be tempting to catalog these traces.
Impalpable yet existing in the present, they are nonetheless part of the
representation of a collective past. It would be tempting to measure
their energy, their precision, and their affective resonances at the
various levels of a culture. Such a project could only lay the foundation
for the fascinating study of the consciousness of history, but it would
require methods and instruments with which I am not familiar. Thus I
am concerned with other traces, those of the second kind that we
historians call documents.
These traces also exist in the present. But their actuality, their
presence, is of a material nature and consequently they are tangible,
delineable, and measurable. Yet they are dead, the concretions of
memory. They form a base that is still fairly sturdy, even though it is
in parts quite damaged, cracked, chipped, and crumbled, and on
which rest the other traces - the kind that live in memories. This stock
I .
SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214 3
of material is a repertory, a resource, a wellspring, and yet it is
limited. It cannot grow any further because the work of the experts is
done. Little by little and patiently, they have identified all these
vestiges; they have collected, dusted, embalmed, cataloged, ~nd
labeled them. They have thus put them in order so that, beanng
witness forever, the document would be a cenotaph to the event.
All these documents are worn, shriveled, torn, and shabby. Some
are barely readable. On some an original imprint can still be seen, but
many only show vestiges of a primary trace that is now lost. For
example, in the year 1214 the gate of Saint Nicolas was built in t.he
walls of the town of Arras. In the course of at least four centunes
people crossing the gate could read two inscriptions on it. One, on the
outward side, simply recorded in Latin the construction date and the
name of the contractor. The other inscription was in French and thus
within the grasp of more people. It presented the text of a poem:
forty-two verses rhymed in 1250, and evoking in this spot the
remembrance of a Prince Louis who at,the time of the construction of
the gate was Lord of Arras and Artois, and the remembrance of his
father Philip, the Good King. It was explained that the latter had had
a bone to pick with the Fleming (the people across the way), but that,
God having honored him, he succeeded in less than a day in chasing
the false Emperor Otto away from the field of battle and in capturing
five counts. More than 300 knights had been killed or taken that-day,
and this had occurred thirty-six years earlier between Bouvines and
Tournai on a Sunday in July, five days before the beginning of
August. 'This public proclamation also added - but here memory is
fainter and chronology is confused - that not far from there and
much earlier, at the end of the tenth century, another King of France
had vanquished another emperor, also bearing the name of Otto.
The Arras inscription was visible to anyone leaving the town by
heading north; it was a commemorative monument, a victory bulletin
similar to the proclamations at-the Carrousel. It stood as a trophy at
the frontier of the Capetian territory, facing Flanders and facing the
Empire. It aimed at preserving for posterity the memory of an already
ancient exploit that was still fresh in the area, so that the feeling for a
community of interests and valiancy could be kindled through the
ages. But the inscription went further yet. It deliberately inserted.the
triumph of Bouvines into the flow of a long stream of military glory,
and, through the homonymy of the two vanquished leaders which
bridged 250 years, it brought together in a single proclamation two
royal victories which everyone already unquestioningly looked upon
as those of a nation.
The poem was carved in that which is most solid and imputrescible,
 4 SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214
just as epitaphs are, and aimed to last till the end of time: never would
the event be forgotten. Nevertheless the inscription proved to be
perishable and has long since been lost. But though the stone has
disappeared, the text still survives thanks to at least two men who
attempted to preserve it. This happened at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, in the time of Peiresc and the first antiquarians,
and in the childhood of erudite history which came to be conceived as
needing the backing of reliable documents. Thus the text was copied
down, in parts by Ferry de Locre, vicar of the parish of Saint Nicolas
of Arras, who was collecting material for a chronicle of the Belgians,
and in its entirety by a lawyer and alderman of Arras, Antoine de
Mol, who was interested in the past of his town. The account thus
escaped destruction, and with it as well the clearly delineated memory
zone of which the gate had been the repository for more than three
and a half centuries.
This turned out to be a decisive rescue as the transcriptions were
published in two books, one printed in 1611 andthe other in 1616.
Unfortunately these works became inaccessible until-modern 'erudition
made the document more available. In 18S6, Victor Le Clerc
published the text again, but this time with a rigorous critique.
Today, anyone can read it on pages 433-6 of volume XXIII of the
Historie litteraire de la France. The trace is now within reach amongst
many others on the shelves of numerous libraries, ready for any
potential use. In' all likelihood it will exist for a long timeto come,
probably much longer than the interest it has aroused.
The survival of Bouvines is based on traces of this sort. Numerous
and complementing each other, they are of diverse origins, of many
different epochs, and even include the obelisk' six meters high erected
in 1863 near the battlefield. The list of all these documents is well
established and they have been routinely consulted for some time. In
the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first thirty-five
years of the twentieth, they were especially sought out by the best
medieval scholars of France, Germany, and Great Britain, particularly in
1881 and 1888, and again in 1913-14. At that time the accuracy of
this documentation was very rigorously tested. Thus everything has
I
been said, and said well, on the course of the battle and on <the
network of intrigues of which it was at once the issue and the
beginning. Consequently it would be futile to examine the record in
the same spirit and to take up the investigation again: nothing new
would come of it. If the interested reader so wishes, he can consult
these books; most of them 'are old but informative, and almost all
make for a pleasant read. If he is in a hurry, he can check pages 166-
202 of volume III of the large Histoire de France edited by Lavisse,
SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214 5
which was published in 1901. This summary is excellent. The few
additional clarifications that might be needed (pertaining to fighting
techniques and estimates of the number of participants) can be found
in the study by J. F. Verbruggen, De Krijgskunst in West Europa in de
Middleeuwen (IX tot beguin XIV euwen), Ghent, 1954.
I would like to look at the traces of the event from a different angle.
The outlook of positivist history discussed above, whose contribution
should not be underestimated, viewed the Battle of Bouvines as
specifically pertaining to the dynamics of the history of power. That
day was perceived as a knot, larger than others, on a continuous
chain of decisions, attempts, hesitations, successes, and failures, all
lined up on a single vector - the evolution of the European states.
This kind of vision allocated two goals for historians. First of all, they
had to establish what had really happened on that spot on July 27,
1214, by examining the documents, much as a trial judge would, in
order to uncover lies, extract truths, confront witnesses with each
other, resolve contradictions, reconstitute missing links, sort out all
the possible hypotheses, and select the soundest ones. Next, they had
to locate the exact position of the "true fact" at the very spot, at once
resultant and eausal, lying at the juncture of the facts' ins and outs.
Yet these goals are urrreachable, This is so because we all know that
the field of vision of all the participants in a battle, including the most
prominent ones, is limited; they can only see a confused melee. No
one has or ever will perceive in its total reality the whirl of a thousand
tangled actions which on that day, in the plain of Bouvines between
noon and five in the afternoon, came to be inextricably intertwined.'
And since the causes and the effects of this battle are, in the literal
meaning of the term, innumerable, their respective import cannot be
apprehended. However, the attempt to come close to their two goals
forced the positivists to abstract, that is, to treat the 1214 event in the
same manner as an event of today. Despite their striving to be
scientific, the positivist historians were trapped in a stubborn drive
for pinpoint exactness and failed to ward off false readings and
anachronisms. This was the result of focusing solely on political,
action, on its motivations and its consequences. T-hey had a tendency
to unconsciously perceive Philip Augustus as Corneille had perceived
Pompeus, that is, as desire, as a will in conflict with other wills and
other desires within the immutability of "human nature." They
ignored the many subtle shifts that had in the course of twenty
generations imperceptibly modified the- behavior of Europeans and
the meaning of their actions, and which, for instance; preclude
thinking 'of the Bouvines knight as a childhood version of the
Reichshoffen mounted soldier.
I.
6 SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214
. This is the reason that led me to look at this battle and the memory
It has left us from the perspective of an anthropologist; in other
words, to attempt to perceive both the battle and the memory as
wrapped up in a cultural whole different from the one which at
present molds our own relationship with the world. This aim
necessitates three interrelated approaches. Firstly, since the event's
imprints cannot be properly interpreted without being first put back
in the cultural system which they affected at the time, it is necessary to
bring in everything that is known about this culture so as to evaluate
the accounts that have come down to us. But secondly, since this
event is extraordinary in itself, the exceptionally deep traces that
remain reveal that which is seldom or never spoken about in the
ordinary course of life. The traces bring together, within a scientific
segment of space and time, a bundle of information on the ways of
thinking and behaving in the course of a battle as well as on the
military function and on those who in the society of that time were in
charge of it. Bouvines offers an extremely favorable locus of
observation for someone attempting to rough-hew a sociology of war
at the beginning of the thirteenth century in northwestern Europe.
Finally, these traces shed light in yet another way on the cultural
milieu where the event burst in and then outlived itself. They show
how the perception of the lived event spreads out in successive waves
which in the unfolding of space and time gradually lose their fullness
and become distorted. And thus, though I can only offer 'a
preliminary sketch or, rather, a research proposal, I will also attempt
to observe the impact that the imaginary and oblivion have on
.
I
information, the insidious penetration of the marvelous, of the
legendary, and, in the course of a sequence of commemorations, the
I
fate of a memory in the midst of a. changing set of mental
i I,
representations.
I, In keeping with this aim, I think the best way to begin is by directly
I. presenting the reader with the closest, clearest, and most extensive
trace of the event. This is provided by the prose chronicle of ,William
the Breton.
The text emanated from the French King's court. It is the official
account of the battle and it thus belongs to a historiographical
tradition which was at that time almost secular in nature. This
tradition had germinated within the Abbey of Saint-Denis. In the
crypt of this monastery, in the lowest levels of this sanctuary said to
have been built by Christ himself, right next to the burial place of the
patron saint who, despite the doctors' learned objections, many held
to have been Saint Paul's disciple, were lined up the sarcophagi of
SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214 7
Dagobert, of Pepin the Short, of the Emperor Charles, the Bald, ~f
Hugh Capet, of almost all the kings of ~rance. T~IS. nec~opohs
provided a striking picture of monarchI,cal, connnurty ~n ,the
succession of the three dynasties: the Merovingian, the Carolingian,
and the Capetian. Royal power rested on these ?raves much, mo~e
than on Reims, the city of baptisms and coronations, It wa~ m this
abbey that the insignia of power were stor~d followmg the
ceremonies of anointment. It was here that the kmg came to fetch
with his own hands the patron saint's banner: the Oriflamme.
When, at the beginning of the twelfth century, Suger, ~ho had been
a childhood friend of King Louis, the grandfather of Philip Augustus,
was installed as the Abbot of Saint-Denis, his first concern was to
give solemn form to his conception of the major function of his
monastery. So as to impress this function upon the eyes of the world,
Suger undertook a sumptuous reconstruction of th.e church. In .a
masterly synthesis which gave birth to Gothic art - ~hIS royal.art, t~IS
"art of France" as it was called then - he combmed the imperial
aesthetic of the Moselle region with that of Neustria along with the
innovations in form which had just seen the light of day in southern
Gaul. Thus the new basilica represented the coming together of the
whole kingdom under a sovereign who, was p~oclaimed to, be
Charlemagne's direct heir. At the same ,tIme, ~hI1e t~e .CapetIans
were opting to establish their main residence III Pans mstead of
Orleans, Suger transferred the mission of celebr~ting th~ king's ,glory
with the written word from Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire to Saint-Denis-en-
France. He himself wrote Louis VI's biography: a vita akin to those
composed for the commemoration of saints and kin~s, those God-
chosen sacred figures, imbued with supernatural VIrtue and the
magical power to heal the sick. After Suger, the mon,ks of the Abbey
of Saint-Denis felt committed to relate for posterrty and for the
edification of his descendants how Louis VI, the man whose crown
they were keeping and whose bodily remains they had rece~ved, so as
to surround them with perpetual and salutary prayers, had m hIS day
assumed royal authority to the fullest. ', .
This writing activity became more pronounced at the begmnmg of
the reign of Philip Augustus not only because of thesteady growth of
the French King's power but also because, as wntten culture was
rapidly expanding, all the Princes of the West came to understand
better and better that panegyrics brought prestige and could serve as
effective weapons in the ever sharper rivalry which drove c0I?-sol~dated
, states to confrontation. Thus, between 1185 and 1204 a Histoire des
I rois des Francs was compiled at Saint-Denis. There is ground to
believe that a sober and precise writer named Rigord worked on it.
 8 SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214
Rigord, who came from the south of France, had probably, prior to
his arrival at the abbey, begun to write a narrative of the ruling
sovereign's deeds, and this perhaps was the reason for his joining the
monastery. He continued to write there until 1206. He presented a
first installment of the Gestes de Philippe Auguste in 1196 and
another four years later.
At that time, William the Breton lived in the closed circle of the
king's intimates. He was serving him faithfully, went to Rome for the
delicate negotiations regarding Philip's divorce and remarriage, and
earned the full confidence of his master who entrusted him with the
education of his bastard, Prince Chariot. William was very rapidly
rising in ranks.
William was one of those parvenus, so numerous at that time, who
had made his way through culture. The best way then open to an
individual of low birth wishing to climb the social ladder was to enter
a school so as to learn to speak and write well. Princes had a pressing
need for people with these skills and they paid them handsomely.
However, the only types of 'schools in existence were those
preparatory to the ecclesiastical professions. As the monasteries'
schools had by then closed their doors, the only ones remaining were
those of the cathedrals and chapters, but these were only open to the
clergy. Thus, necessity led to joining the Church even if only to
dissociate oneself from it later on by becoming librarian, adviser,
medical doctor, or entertainer, as did so many of these turncoats of
learning, drawn by high pay, whom prelates attempted in vain to
keep in God's exclusive service.
By the age of 12, William had left Brittany, where opportunities for
learning were limited and mediocre, and gone to the "French" regions
where more was taught. He first studied in Nantes and then at the
best schools - those of Paris. It appears that William returned to his
native land to seek his fortune, but without much success. Between
the ages of thirty and forty chance finally smiled upon him: he
succeeded in gaining access to the royal chapel where a good number
of his colleagues were prospering. This domesticity of prayer and of
all the tasks requiring learning could lead to the most profitable
positions. Those who proved to be docile and clever were assured of a
good future: the Capetian controlled the high clergy, and he had total
power to place advantageously those who knew how to please him.
Thus they were all justified in expecting a comfortable canon's
prebend upon reaching their sixties, and they might even become
, bishops if they maneuvered well.
1
This is precisely what William did. After the year 1200 and his
"
Roman mission, he made himself indispensable. The king came to
SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214 9
want him at his side everywhere he went. William was there at the
siege of Chateau-Gaillard. As chaplain, his main duty was to chant, in
unison with others, the continuous prayer which had to envelop the
royal person and inscribe each of his gestures into the modulat!ons of
an appropriate psalm. At Bouvines, in the very midst of the action, he
was still chanting at Philip's back. And it is here that he came to the
fore, being the first to turn the day's happening into an event. Indeed,
the victory immediately appeared so important to the royal entourage
that, in order to satisfy his patron, William drafted a grandiose
account almost on the spot. Even more significantly, he proceeded to
insert his narrative into the direct continuation of Rigord's chronicle
which another monk had scantily kept up till 1210. William acquired
the Saint-Denis text, abbreviated it, and filled in the gaps by
recounting some of the salient events he remembered which glorified
his master. He thus composed the entire history of a reign.
As a result of this, a transfer occurred which calls for a great deal of
attention: the historiographical project passed from monastic hands
into those of a clerk, from an abbey into the king's house itself,
thereby becoming a sign of the strength of a power which was
gradually cutting itself loose from liturgical celebration~ and. w~s
beginning to secularize itself. The space allocated to fighting within
the narrative itself also evidences this transfer. One hundred and fifty
years earlier, the monk Helgaud, author of a life of Robert the Pious,
had only been interested in prayers, charities, pilgrimages, and
miracles and had left to others the task of narrating the wars. In
contrast' William the Breton writes of almost nothing else. And it is
Bouvines more than anything else that he means to glorify in his
book. He writes more about this sole day than he does about the five
preceding years. Everything else is for him only preliminary to what
he sees as a fulfillment - so much so that he decides to close his first
version of his work on the year 1214, that is, on the shock of the
event.
William has thus given us a narrative that is of course contrived
and that constantly highlights those events likely to add to the
Capetian's glory. But, apart from this, it is an honest account, as
honest as it is possible to have from someone in service concerned
about his old age. It is a detailed, precise, clear account, not
overcluttered with rhetoric or with attempts at pleasing or showing
l off the author's classical erudition - in short, the best type of account.
f
J It was written in Latin, the language of the educated, of the priests -
because the house of the king, the anointed of God, sacred as a
bishop, is first of all a chapel. The monks of Saint-Denis retriev~d ~his
ecclesiastical version so as to insert it into the great compilation
 10 SUNDAY JULY 27, 1214
whose making they pursued from reign to reign. But in 1274, the
1
abbot of the monastery decided to have it translated into the vulgate
along with the whole historiographical set within which William's
narrative had found its niche. This new concern with offering the
official history of the monarchy to a broader public, to all the
interested individuals who had not attended the schools, was the sign
to
of another cultural mutation. I have chosen to.present the text of this
I translation here on account of its admirable, piquant, and lively
prose. It has been adapted very slightly so as to-rii'ake it easier to
understand but without losing its vitality.

f
i,
However, in order to enable one and all to follow the spectacle, it is
first necessary to introduce the actors, to set the stage, to outline in a
very brief prologue the intrigue of which nothing is said in the body of

r the text but which nonetheless led to the morning of Bouvines.

The Event
I,

I
L
1
1
 1
The Stage and the 'Cast
11
~
I!

The roles are all played by men, as was the custom in the old theater,
but since the spectacle is of a military nature the characters are
perforce all male. Still, we could have expected to catch a glimpse, if
only in the haze of the background, of some of those bands of women
of various social stations whom we know at that time to have been
following all armies, including those of the crusaders. Nonetheless,
they are absent here. For William and his audience, Bouvines is
serious business. It is a battle, a solemn occasion, a ceremony in some
ways sacred, and its image, like that of high liturgy, could only be
masculine. To these men, women are nothing but the adornments of
worldly frivolities, minor pieces in a game, in the distractions sought
by youth. Or again, they are dangerous bait, traps set by the Devil,
instruments of temptation, potential occasions for a fall. This is why
·1 there are no female characters in the party of righteousness, of victory
- that of the French King. The few we see are all in the opposite camp.
.I
1
The Breton only makes one woman appear in his prose chronicle.
She is the Countess-Mother of Flanders, a kind of matron of the
opposing camp, the elder of the bad lineage. It is through her that the
title with which the good King Philip's enemy is adorned has been
transmitted. She is shown as something of a witch, a divineress having
t commerce with spirits and manipulating spells. This is because she
was born in the Spanish countries. Like all women originating from
these areas corrupted by the presence of the Moors and the Jews, she
adds the practice of sortilege to the perversity of her gender. She is a
betrayer who in the end will herself be betrayed.
In his Philippiad, which is simply a rhymed elaboration of his
chronicle, William mentions women on two more occasions, but
always in an underhand manner. One of his allusions is tainted with
1 courtliness. At the start of the battle, the Flemish knight John
 14 THE EVENT
Buridan, aiming to uplift the hearts of those around him, calls out:
"Let each of us think of his lady!" What should we make of this? Is it
meant as praise? Is it a leaning towards the fashionable aristocratic
manners which were slowly infiltrating the austere ambiance of the
Capetian court? Or perhaps it is a way of suggesting, as if in passing,
that the enemy side is that of frivolity? In contrast, the second
evocation clearly has a pejorative intent. If William the Breton does
mention the lady who comes along with the traitor of the story, the
Count of Boulogne - a lady who is not his spouse but his concubine
and who moreover is the sister of the most odious of band leaders, the
I adventurer Hugh of Boves - it is indeed to underline the wickedness
.
,I
of those who fight the French King. They revel in debauchery. They
are men of pleasure.
On the other hand, horses are very much in evidence. None are
referred to by name, but they receive praise for their exploits and pity
for their troubles. One of them, Emperor Otto's steed, has one of the
main roles: its death generates more echoes - and seemingly greater
mourning - than the sufferings endured by most of the men hurt or
fallen in battle.
There are yet other characters present. Though they are invisible,
we can sense their high degree of activity beyond the margins of
perception. Saints are not directly mentioned in the chronicle, but
everyone knows that they are among the fighters. They have come to
help those who honor them: first of all there is Saint Denis, the official
protector of the kingdom, and then Lambert, the patron saint of
Liege, who is the adversary of the Capetian's adversaries. William has
Pallas flutter above the fray only to show that he has read the classics:
the goddess is merely an opera prop, but God, of course, is there
along with the "Enemy," the Devil.
Nevertheless, it is the warriors who take up the entire stage and,
appearing as they do in the midst of the action, they must be fully
armed. They are clearly divided into two groups of combatants: those
who fight on foot and those who fight on horseback. They make up
two unequal parts; the first is much larger in number, yet all the light
shines on the second. In fact, this split between foot soldiers and
cavalry, so visible and consequential in the field of battle, does not
match exactly the division which in the minds of their contemporaries
isolated knights, those ideal cavaliers, from the common people, the
"poor," the villeins. This was a fundamental split which at that time
underlay all views of society and had done so for at least the previous
two centuries in France.
This division is linked to the theory of the three orders which had
been formulated for the first time on the morrow of the year 1000.
,
L
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 15
The theory came out of the educated circle of the High Church,
particularly from amongst the bishops who were the most eager to
bolster the crumbling prestige of the royal magistrature. Since then,
no one has doubted that divine will has separated men into three
strictly closed categories. They have each been assigned a specific
function and their peaceful combination forms the basis of the social
order through the reciprocal exchange of services. The largest of these
categories has work as its vocation so that its labor can maintain the
members of the other two "orders" in a state of leisure and material
comfort enabling them to fulfill their specific mission. One segment of
the ranks of the privileged is made up of those who pray and whose
role is crucial in bringing the favors of heaven on the whole
population. The other segment wages war. It is made up of the
knights who are predestined through their ancestors' blood and are
gifted with a special "virtue." They have received, around age twenty,
arms that the priests have blessed and which they should only use for
just causes: the protection of clerks, monks, and the "unarmed
folks," and the spread of the Christian faith.
According-to this dominant ideology, this sacramental vision of the
harmony of the social body, only knights have the right to bear the
complete warriors equipment. At that time' this equipment is still
primarily symbolized by the sword, the long sword of Frankish
tradition, but its major element is the war-horse whose decisive
efficacy had been confirmed through the progress of military arts in
the course of the twelfth century. However, on the field of Bouvines,
despite the fact that all foot soldiers are indeed men of low birth and
all knights - barring the evisceration and the putting out of
commission of their steeds - are indeed on horseback, we can also see
cavaliers who do not belong to the knightly order and who
nevertheless are said to be valorous when they are on the good side.
These are the "sergeants," subordinates drawn from the common
people but whom princes have taught to ride in order to be better
served. No one confuses them with the noble combatants even though
they are equipped very much like them. For the confrontation they
have shed the "cloth armor" worn by scouts, which makes for a
comfortable and untiring ride, and they have covered their bodies in a
metal shell to protect them from blows.
Remains from military equipment of that period are extremely
scarce because the dead had long since stopped taking their armor
with them to the grave - that choice site for archeological finds.
Furthermore, antiquated weapons were rarely kept on the shelves of
noble households; instead, they were used right away in the forging of
new ones as iron was still in short supply at that time. As a result,
.....
 16 THE EVENT
everything we know about the implements of battle comes from
representations, but these are not very reliable. It is difficult to assign
a sure date to most painted and sculpted works, and we can never
know for certain whether the artist was attempting to reproduce
faithfully what he saw or whether he was copying from older models.
However, the pictures depicted on seals, on illuminations, on some
bas-reliefs, and on the fine metalware of the hunt allow us to roughly
make out the appearance of the Bouvines combatants.
The first impression is that of extreme disparity. Armament varies
completely from one man to the other, and this diversity results
primarily from the very large spread in degrees of wealth: everyone
equips himself according to his means and as strongly as he can. To
this we need add that to all the men present, with the exception of a
few churchmen such as William the Breion and the clerk who stands
with him at the side of the King, of France, war is life itself. It is at
once a primordial mission, the most ardent of-pleasures, and the main
opportunity to be a winner. Their initial expense, the investment they
feel the most necessary and profitable, thus goes' inro.vmilitary
equipment. They could not conceive of a more useful way-of'spending
the resources at their disposal than by securing the tools to better
dominate their adversary and, most of all, to better protect their own
selves from harm.
It so happens that, in this part of the world, the dawn of the
thirteenth century is a moment when the circulation of money
increases and, through the play of seignorial institutions and ex-
changes, comes to be more and more abundant in the hands of the
men devoted to war: the nobles and the inhabitants of the mercantile
towns from where most of the sergeants are recruited. As a result, war
spending is relentlessly on the rise and for more than a century has
stimulated the development of the breeding of good horses and the
growth of iron metallurgy. Weaponry is then, as in the course of all of
human history, one of the leading sectors of technological progress.
In fact, the account of the Battle of Bouvines mentions some of these
recent breakthroughs.
"'I Some of the innovations are aimed at bolstering attack. To the
horseman's old offensive weapons, the lance and the long sword
made primarily to unsaddle and stun the enemy through the shocks of
l' successive alternate charges, have now been added more aggressive
hooked and pointed tools. These tools of aggression are more
perfidious as well and, on that account, they are seen as ignominious
and evil. William the Breton speaks of them in a somewhat similar
vein as he does of women: he puts them all on the side of wickedness
and the Devil. We see them in the adversary camp and almost always
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 17
in the hands of the plebeian fighter, the foot soldier of that damned
warrior, the mercenary. This is because the new weapons are
dangerous. They are much too effective: they disregard honor; they
turn the rules of the game around. The hooks destroy the social order.
With them, soldiers of low birth bring down from their mounts men
of the highest ranks, they harpoon them by the edges of their armor
and throw them in the dust - the hooks are the image of subversion
itself. And then, thin well-sharpened knives can penetrate the joints of
the unhorsed knight's armor, reach up to the tenderness of the flesh
and pierce it. In other words, they can kill, which is something not
usually done amongst knights.
However, the improvement of the instruments of aggression
provoked immediate parrying in the form of a lively growth in the
means of dodging. Indeed, the princes of the battlegrounds are
concerned with victory but at the least possible cost. Like everyone
else, they are afraid of dying and their first concern is with their own
protection. At the time of Bouvines, the main innovations have thus
led to the reinforcement of armor. In the past, it had covered the
scalp, the torso, and the thighs, but it had left the arms, the legs, the
lower stomach, the face, and the neck vulnerable. These breaches in
protection called for the addition of new defensive trimmings. To the
hauberk, the long split tunic woven out of fine iron mail, they now
know how to add metal sleeves and chausses which cover the arms all
the way to below the wrists and the legs down tothe ankles. The
hauberk now extends toward the neck through a protective cover of
the nape of the neck and she chin, which they called a ventaille, and
which itself gradually tends to disappear under a helmet extending
towards the lower part of the face and taking the shape of a full
cylinder with only a few narrow openings for seeing and breathing.
Thus the interstices through which death can enter have been
reduced. The would-be killer must now aim carefully at the eye-holes
or dig towards the hollows of the groin through the narrow apertures
left between the chausses and the hauberk to allow horsemen to
relieve themselves. Killing thus requires a skillful cracking of the tight
assemblage, in other words, it has become an art. .
The modern armor thus provides confidence. It allows for greater
daring, for pursuing glory ever further - without trembling
overmuch. This technical progress is at the basis of a change in ethics,
of an imperceptible shift in the hierarchy of virtues. It makes possible,
within the order of chivalry, the slow flowering of courage - this
twelfth-century novelty. Yet, this handsome comforting attire, these
hero-making arms - one must be able to afford them!
Indeed the horseman's equipment becomes more expensive with
1-
I'
18 THE EVENT
each improvement. This is an epoch when, even though the monetary
income of knights is continually growing, they have to struggle to
provide their sons with the best available fighting equipment at the
close of their apprenticeships. Money reserves are-too thin, weapons
kept at home are outdated: one could use them, but then the game
would become fraught with perils and the quest for prowess much
too foolhardy. Should one then be deprived of glory? Rather, one
turns to the lord of the fief whose principal duty, and the surest means
of shoring up his prestige, is to have the sons of his vassals armed at
the prescribed time. We see him also worry about the expense; he
must equip his own sons, and so he turns a deaf ear for as long as he
can. So much so that, in the French kingdom, many already are the
sons of noble families who are champing at the bit and growing old in
the course of the endless wait to be dubbed. They are stuck at the gate
of knighthood. Their appearance, their condition, the very title they
are given - "squire," "damoiseau" - which they sport so as to not be
confused with the common folk who naturally are not armed, and
also so as to assert their inborn ability, with luck, someday to become
knighted - these circumstances are the very same ones that up to then
marked the transitory condition of the adolescents who followed
adult fighters, carried their equipment, learned the trade from them,
and proved themselves in their eyes.
Thus it is clear that it is primarily the high cost 'Of weapons that
makes for the checkered look of the mass of fighters on the field of
Bouvines. To begin with, there are the foot soldiers who are from the
class of the poor, most having been conscripted in the communes by
,I order of the prince. They are the unlucky ones, the rotten apples, the
I misfits, or perhaps those slower to hide than others. Their neighbors
have betrayed them. Equipped with odds and ends, with only
I leggings, a leather tunic, at best an iron hat, to protect their bodies,
they are the ones who are going to die. As for the horsemen, noble or
not, many still wear the old pointed helmet with the large noseguard
of the Bayeux Tapestry and, as best they can, take refuge behind their
shields against low blows to their limbs and stomach. Only the rich
are well protected. The greater their power, the greater the worth of
their fiefs, the heavier will be their armament, the less their ease of
movement, and the less visible their faces. The skin of those princes
who have gone as far as to armor their horses cannot be seen, which
for all intents and purposes renders them unrecognizable. Hence, the
importance of rallying signs: the cries, the banners held up next to
each captain, the heraldic symbols sewn on the "coats of arms,"
which are types of surplices of light material that flap over the armor
j
but which tear quickly, soon turning to tatters, and whose ruin makes
i
I
L
'I
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 19
strangers out of those wearing them. Mistaken identities are a
common occurrence. All a warrior needs to do to completely change
identity is, in the heat of battle, to borrow one of these surcoats from
one of his fellows. He is then taken to be more or less formidable than
he really is, and his surprised adversaries discover upon approach
someone braver, or more cowardly, or more hated. Thus, each and
everyone is forced to scream out his name through the holes in his
helmet. Every fray is a tornado of emblems, a din of calls and
invectives, and, in the wheat's trampled dust, a whirlpool of tangled
SIgns.
Locked into their clanking carapaces and covered with lacerated
colors, the characters at first glance appear merged in a muddled
throng which does not allow itself to be readily enumerated. How
many are they? William's narrative gives some figures, but they are
incomplete. Scholars have attempted to estimate the number of
participants through the perusal of other sources. All their various
figures are still problematical. The most recent and most reliable are
those propounded by J. F. Verbruggen: Philip Augustus would have
assembled for the battle at least 1,300 knights, perhaps as many
mounted sergeants and from 4,000 to 6,000 foot soldiers. In the other
camp, there were probably a slightly greater number of knights and
definitely more infantry. In total on the field, there would have been
some 4,000 horsemen and about three times that-number of men on
foot.
We can extract from this crowd fewer than 300 names, based upon
the most detailed evidence, in particular accounting documents in the
form of prisoners' lists - very carefully compiled because money was
involved - along with lists of the names of those pledging for their
ransoms. All but four are knights' names. As I have said, only chivalry
occupied the front of the stage: everyone else plays minor roles.
However, the main body of knights itself remains almost entirely in
the shadows. The some 300 patronyms that we have uncovered
enable us to locate those whom they designate within a lineage, a
seigniory, a locale, or a province, but they tell us nothing about the
men themselves. So, finally, barely a handful of characters emerge
from obscurity. They are lined up in two camps as in chess - the game
of the princes of that time which was allowed because it is one of
intellect rather than chance, and thus does not entail the risk of
tempting God. The Whites and the Blacks: by this, we mean, putting
ourselves in the exact light of the narrative, in the Manichean
symbolism which at that epoch governs all mental representation, the
fighters for the good and the fighters for evil.
20 THE EVENT
1 THE STAGE AND THE CAST
Philip is but a few days away from his fiftieth birthday. For his time
this means that he is definitely entering old age. Thirty-five years
earlier, the magnates of the kingdom had acclaimed him king in the
cathedral of Reims and the prelates had anointed his body with oil
from the holy phial, thus consecrating him, in the strongest sense of
the word infusing him, as is done with bishops, with divine power
and all the virtues it confers. At the time his father, King Louis VII,
even though still alive, did not feel capable of action anymore. He
survived the election and coronation of his son by a few months, but
the latter, from the very day of coronation, had become entirely King.
He was fourteen years old. On this awkward boy henceforth rested
the full burden of leading the Frankish people toward salvation and
of maintaining it in peace and justice with.the scepter and the sword.
Thus, for the past thirty-five years, every spring Philip has climbed on
a horse and led his people into battle. He has dragged them into a
series of skirmishes which result, at the time .of harvest or the vintage,
in an arbitral assembly, in long palavers where discord, always active
in the world of princes, is for a moment set aside for the benefit of
God's people, that is, the Church and the poor.
In 1190 he had ventured much farther afield to the Holy Land with
the hope of liberating the Holy Sepulchre as his father had done earlier
and which the heathens had just reconquered. He was not able to take
Jerusalem, but he fulfilled his oath faithfully during the siege of Saint-
John-of-Acre and lost his health in the process. The following fall, he
had left the crusaders' army and gone home by crossing Italy through
Rome, Siena, and Milan, traversing the Alps before the heavy snows,
blinded in one eye and more prone to fits of temper and anxiety than
he had been at the start of his journey. He was then twenty-five years
old.
At the time of Bouvines, those who admire and flatter him talk of
Philip as a "handsome man, with a graceful figure, a jovial face, bald,
a ruddy complexion, enjoying good food and drink." They claim that
this bon vivant is "provident, persistent ... making decisions quickly
and easily." As they are in the service of an ideology of monarchy
aiming at .presenting the sovereign as the true friend of the people,
they describe him as "liking to seek the advice of the little folks." In
other words, he is wary of the powerful and seeks more reliable
support outside the high aristocracy.
Philip has married three times. A compulsive aversion has led him
to reject his second wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, on his very wedding
night. Defying the Church he quickly took another wife. French
bishops went obediently along with this adulterous union, but the
Pope condemned it and imposed the strongest possible sanctions on
21
him. However, the King did not give in. By 1214, the woman referred
to in Rome as his concubine has been dead for thirteen years. Only a
few months earlier, Ingeborg left the monastery where her husband
had kept her; she is now at court, living as Queen. On the psalmbook
which she uses for her prayers, Ingeborg will 'make a notation which is
especially expressive of the impact of the event, as there are only two
other dates marking special funerary or thanksgiving orations
inscribed in the margins of this magnificent book. She writes that on
July 27, "Philip, King of France, vanquished in battle King Otto and
the Count of Flanders and the Count of Boulogne and several other
barons."
Since Hugh Capet, every king of France has been able in his lifetime
to associate with his power a son who has then succeeded him
without any trouble. Philip, the sixth of this line of males, is himself
well provided with children. In addition to his bastard, who was born
of a young woman of the Arras nobility (and who was to become
Bishop of Noyon), he has two sons and a daughter. The two last
born, offspring of the adulterous marriage, have been legitimized by
pontifical action. As for Louis, the eldest, Philip has avoided making
him a king even though he is-beginning to feel-the strain of continual
campaigns. Nonetheless he puts his son to good use. Prince Louis,
Lord of Artois, which he has inherited from his mother, has always
served him faithfully and, more and more often, he replaces his father
at the head of the army when war must be waged far from Paris. The
pre-association of the oldest son with royal power is in fact not
necessary anymore. It has been many years since any French royal
sons rebelled against their father. The Capetian lineage is more solidly
anchored than any other, and the notion that the crown should be
regularly transmitted from father to son in the order, of primogeniture
is solidly established. An epic poem composed around 1137 and
entitled Le couronnement de Louis already stated that hereditary
rights must be taken for granted even if the king's son should prove to
be an idiot, and that coronation was just an additional proof of divine
appointment. And on top of all this, Philip has yet another cause for
rejoicing: a second grandson (the first one, Philip, was to die in 1218)
has just been born at Poissy; he is the future Saint Louis. The survival
of the dynasty is assured.
The King bears the surname of "Augustus." Rigord is the one who
gave it to him so as to extol the man who had increased the royal
domain threefold in a single sweep. However, this name carries a yet
deeper meaning. Everyone knows that it evokes Caesar. It has the ring
of a claim to empire. Le couronnement de Louis had already stated
that "Rome belongs by right to the King of Saint-Denis" - it should
 22 THE EVENT
not be left to the Germans. The Capetian who has recently come to
realize that he is the most powerful sovereign in Christendom
expresses, at this moment in history, his will to take his place in
Charlemagne's filiation, to admit of no temporal power higher than
his own, and to aim for the highest leadership of the Christian people.
One hundred years earlier, Suger was already working toward the
capture of the Carolingian heritage when he conceived the project of
gathering all the cultural emblems of the Frankish empire around the
Abbey of Saint-Denis, in other words, around the Parisian monarchy.
The structure erected on the .plane of ideology and symbols was
supported by a strong burst of economic progress from which Ile-
de-France was benefiting more than any other province and which
stimulated the growth of Paris and brought the renown of the royal
town to new heights. The matrimonial policy of the sovereigns
propped up the structure even more. Their marriages aimed at
connecting the Carolingian stock more closely to Hugh Caper's
descendants. This was important in an epoch where it was generally
thought that all charisma came from breeding. Indeed, the blood that
flows in the veins of Philip Augustus is more purely that of
Charlemagne because his mother came from the House of Ghampagne.
Isabel of Hainaut, his first wife, was herself a Carolingian and thus his
son, Prince Louis, is even closer than himself to those ancestors
who had ruled the Empire in the past. These marriages probably
explain why, around the time that we are speaking about, royal
blood suddenly assumed the central position in the system of
I
representations on which the image of the monarchy is based. A
number of signs point to this. One of them is the great care with
which precise genealogies are now compiled in the writing shops
.I employed by the sovereign. Another is the fact that, from Philip
Augustus on, the younger sons of a monarch, even though they do not
receive the unction of coronation, will be buried in the Saint-Denis
necropolis where hitherto only the remains of kings and queens had
rested.
Indisputably issued from the most remote Merovingian ancestors,
who are themselves represented by a whole network of widely
diffused legends according to which they were the descendants of the
Trojans, that is, the founders of Rome, the Capetian is destined to
rule the world. At the threshold of the thirteenth century, one can
hear the professors of the Parisian schools, whom Philip listens to and
protects, proclaim loudly that Providence willed that the seat of
highest learning be moved first from Greece to Rome and then from
Rome to Paris. The aged King who leads God's army at Bouvines is,
through an analogical translation, just as convinced that the flow of
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 23
history fates him more than anyone else to crush heresy and to
maintain the whole of Catholic and Roman Christianity within the
divine order.
The person of Philip, the lieutenant of the celestial power, and the
Oriflamme, the sacred object that is held up in front of him to signal
the presence at his side of Saint Denis, protector of the kingdom,
constitute the sole center of the camp of the Whites on the Bouvines
chessboard. A broad net of hierarchical relations firmly ties this camp
into a single body. Closest to the King of France, as if they were his
defensive towers, are placed the men of his lineage. They do not
include his eldest son, who at that time is waging war in the south in
his father's name, nor the cadet who is still too young. But his two
first cousins are there, one barely older than the King and the other
barely younger. They are Robert, Count of Dreux, and Pierre of
Courtenay, Count of Auxerre, who at a later date was to wear an
imperial diadem, that of Constantinople. Another Capetian, but from
a more removed line, is present. He is Eudes, Duke of the
Burgundians, master of one of the five great regional principalities
whose name ensures the survival in the kingdom's memory of the
ethnic communities of the earliest Middle Ages. 'He is also the same
age as the King.
In this ranking by honor, the counts come next: first Raoul, Count
of Soisson.iwho at one point had been brother-in-law to Robert of
Dreux; then John, Count of Beaumont; Gaucher of Chatillon, Count
of Saint-Pol, nephew of the Count of Dreux and cousin to Philip
Augustus; and Arnoul, Count of Guines, who had in the past been the
French King's enemy and had laid waste his lands but who now had
just switched sides and whose domains have been looted and burned
this season by the Fleming. In this group we can also place; even
though they do not bear the countal title, Mathew of Montmorency,
whose spouse, daughter of the Count of Soissons, is the niece of
Robert of Dreux; his kinsman the Viscount of Melun; and John of
Nesle, nephew of the Count of Soissons, brother-in-law of the Count
of Saint-Pol and also Castellan of Bruges which makes of him a lord
in both Picardy and Flanders but who remains faithful to the French
party. All these men are of the same generation as the sovereign. Only
one, at this level of the hierarchy, strikes a younger figure. He is
Henry, Count of Bar, who is said to be a "youth" because he is not
yet married even though in effect he has just succeeded his father.
This less decrepit man fights among the knights of the king's mesnie.
The group of knights assembled around the fleurs-de-lis banner and
whose mounts brush the flanks of the royal horse is composed of
Philip's old comrades, lifelong friends, his drinking companions, men
11
 24 THE EVENT
for the most part of his own age. They fill the functions of department
heads either in or outside the palace and they are all cousins; they
include Bartholomew of Roye, Gauthier the Young, John of Rouvray,
William of Garlande. As for Peter Mauvoisin and Gerard la Truie,
they are Lorrainians in the Count of Bar's following. Old or new ties
of affinity closely or distantly connect all these men to the Capetian
lineage and to all the countal families. Garlande, foro instance, is
through his wife the nephew of Robert of Dreux and brother-in-law
of the Count of Saint-Pol; he is also father-in-law of the Count of
Beaumont. William des Barres - the "Barrois" as he is also called -
comes through as the team's strong man. He has been famous in all
the courts ever since he jousted against Richard Lionheart, King of
England, and the flower of chivalry in front of the crusaders' army at
Saint-John-of-Acre. William holds the position of seneschal; he is,the
King's right-hand man and for more than thirty years has accompanied
him on all his expeditions.
William the Breton mentions a handful of other knights, some of
whom fly their own banner and lead their own companies. Almost all
! of them have their seigniory either in Picardy, such as Thomas of
I,'I
Saint-Valery, Hugh and Gauthier of Fontaine, Peter Tristan, Hugh
~'
and John of Mareuil, or in the Soissonais, such as the brothers of
Condune. There are only two Normans, Stephen of Longchamp, the
"Unlucky," and William of Mortemer, but they are long-standing
vassals of the French King.
Armed in the same manner as knights, two prelates of the Holy
Church are among the combatants. One is Philip, Bishop of Beauvais
and brother of the Count of Dreux. For him the encounter is a golden
opportunity to assuage long-standing grudges. Despite his ecclesiastical
condition he fights·to his heart's content, not with a sword however,
because he might spill blood which he has no right to do, but simply
,~
with a cudgel. The other is Brother Guerin, "Elect" of Senlis; this
means that he has been nominated to the episcopal seat but has not
yet been consecrated. This honor is.a reward for very long-standing
service to the King. He is a knight of the Order of Hospitalers and
thus is an expert in the military arts. He is eight years older than the
King and has helped him with advice and weapons ever since the
coronation. He is the Nestor of this Iliad.
William the Breton names only a single sergeant, Peter de la
f Tournelle, a freak exception as he does not seem to be of noble blood
!
t yet he is so valorous that he could be,worthy of knighthood, and a
~ single foot soldier who, in contrast, is quite representative of his
I
social status: his natural baseness drives him to nastily slash the
Count of Flanders' face. But in addition the Breton shows us the
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 25
rabble organized into large masses, the communes, which are a bit
like persons. These are groupings made up of people of low birth
which in some small towns or groups of villages provide their
members with specific privileges whose prices are specific obligations.
King Philip has created some of them, and he has confirmed the
others in exchange for the armed service he expects of them. In case of
danger, all able-bodied men in the communal group are mobilized.
Formore distant military operations, commune members must all
contribute, either providing..a fixed number of soldiers or enough
deniers to hire substitutes. At the beginning of the oldest register of
the Capetian administration that has come down to us, there are lists
compiled in 1204 listing thirty-nine communes spread out from the
Artois to Poitou, from Normandy to Sens. Seventeen of these are at
Bouvines; they represent the episcopal cities of Noyon, Soissons,
Amiens, and Beauvais, the mercantile towns of Arras, .Monrdidier,
Montreuil, Hesdin, Corbie, Roye, and Cornpiegne, and finally the
federations of village communities of Bruyere, Cerny, Crepy-en-
Laonnais, Grandelain, Vailly, and one other whose name is missing.
Everyone of these actors, great or small, famous or anonymous, is
caught in an intertwined tangle of multiple loyalties which weave
between themselves the threads of a very tight-knit coherence. First of
all there are the family ties of filiation or affinity which, in formal
analysis, turn the whole of chivalry into a single kin group despite the
exogamic prescriptions which the Church expects to be respected in
the name of an enormously expanded conception of incest. There are
also the complementary ties of vassalic homage inducing the respect
of sworn loyalty and particularly the avoidance of felony and its
punishment, the confiscation of the fief. Even more important is the
long-standing friendship initiated during childhood, during the years
of apprenticeship at the 'court' of a common lord, consecrated on a
Whitsunday in the course of the celebrations of group dubbing, and
nurtured for years by the pleasures of the hunt and war, by the shared
excitement of early morning departures, by the connivance required
for the taking of worthy prey to be shared out during the evening
drinking bout. Of course, this friendship is marred by misunder-
standings, conflicts, and challenges; nevertheless it forms the basis of
the genuine cohesiveness of the team gathered around each banner.
An additional factor is territorial ties, the feeling of belonging to the
same region which they have to defend together and whose renown
they must bring to new heights. These territorial ties are those which
assemble knights and squires around the man who bears the countal
title or who controls the main fortress of the region and which also
motivate comradeship within communal troops.
'F
26 THE EVENT
An aggregate of solid kernels bound to each other through the
friendship of their leaders, men of similar age and often of the same
blood - such is the French King's host. The warriors who make it up
come mainly from areas neighboring the field of battle: Artois,
Picardy, Soissonais, Laonnais, Thierarche, There are no communes
from Ile-de-France and the Vexin because Paris cannot be left
defenseless, and few knights from that region as many of them are at
that time fighting in the south with Simon de Montfort in the
Albigensian region and with Prince Louis at the borders of Anjou.
The chivalry of Burgundy is here, following its duke. That of
Champagne is represented as well, but is not led by its count who is
then a child of twelve. William the Breton names none ofthese
Burgundians and Champenois: they are already foreigners to him.
Normans are few because the duchy, recently annexed to the royal
domain, is still unreliable and its fighting men might join the enemy.
There is not a single knight, sergeant, or fool: soldier from south of the
Loire: that area is another world. The royal army at Bouvines is
primarily that of the old Francia: in fact it is the Frankish army.
At the outset, the opposite camp presents a much less homogeneous
appearance. It is riddled with intrigues. It bears the censure of the
Roman Church. It is perverted, covered with evil's shadow. To begin
with, in the face of the King of the Whites, the King of the Blacks has
two faces. One of these remains masked; it is that of John Lackland,
King of England. Nonetheless, his is the real face: John leads the
whole game from afar. He is the youngest of the sons of Henry
Plantagenet and on that account has been deprived of appanage,
hence his nickname. He is only two years younger than King Philip.
Unpopular, he has constantly betrayed and plotted against first his
father and then his brother Richard Lionheart. At that time, he did
homage to the King of France who was egging him on while mocking
him behind his back. Despite all this, Richard on his death bed made
the English barons swear loyalty to John. The latter finally became
King at age thirty-two and also became master of the enormous
seigniories that he had been desperate to acquire, those held by his
father and his mother Eleanor on the continent: the county of Anjou,
cradle of the family, the duchy of Normandy, this treasure, this
threatening weight on the flank of Paris itself, and finally the duchy of
Aquitaine.
John is unstable, incapable of sustaining the pursuit of a military
aim for very long - which has caused him to be mocked for his
"Bluntsword." Cruel and treacherous well beyond the extent princes
of his rank were normally forgiven for, of a destructive sexuality (is it
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 27
again "bluntsword" ?), John Lackland has ceaselessly violated all the
strictures of Christian morality and the ethics of chivalry. Melusine's
throwback, carrier of a diabolical blood, he is said to be rotten on the
inside, possessed, made mad through sortileges and evil spells.
According to the Englishman Fouques Fitz-Warin, "King John was a
man without conscience, evil, contrary and hated by all good people,
and lecherous; he could not hear of a beautiful lady or maiden, wife
or daughter of a count, baron or other, without wanting to ravish her
either through promises, bribery or force."
This capricious tragic figure is not felt worthy of any indulgence.
He was excommunicated for four years for having treated English
abbeys in the same manner as the spouses of his vassals. The papal
interdict was cast on the kingdom, suspending all liturgical
celebrations to the great distress of the frightened people who begged
their king to mend his ways. He had done so the preceding year
through a lip-service reconciliation with the Pope. In July 1214, John
Lackland is far away from Bouvines, at a distance of several courier
days. He is waging war on the Loire, in the lands of his ancestors, the
region that is really his. Nonetheless, it is his will, it is the 40,000
marks of silver distributed in his name, which feed the battle.
Another king takes John's place on the field of battle: there has to
be one. He is the King of Germany, Otto of Brunswick. Otto is King
John's nephew, son of his sister and the Duke of Saxony, the Guelf
Henry the Lion. Otto is a markedly younger man but we do not know
his birth date: some say 1182 in Normandy, others around 1175 in
Germany. This much is certain: he was educated in the household of
Richard Lionheart. Superbus et stultus, sed fortis, "arrogant and
stupid, but strong," says the Ursperg Chronicle of him. Because his
brother was in the Holy Land at the time, because fifty' horses
carrying 100,000 marks of silver came with him from Normandy,
because King Richard had friends in Rhineland and a great hatred for
the then King of Germany, the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia, Otto
was the one whom the Archbishop of Cologne had had elected in
119&by some of the German princes and then had crowned at Aix-la-
Chapelle.
In the course of the next ten years, the anti-king of the Guelf party
led inconclusive expeditions against his rival. He had some success in
1208: Philip of Swabia was murdered and so Otto married his
daughter, engaged Philip's advisers in his own service, stuffed them
with English money, had himself elected a second time, and traveled
to Italy to seek the imperial diadem to which his position as King of
r Germany, his blood and the title itself that he was bearing - that of
Restorer of the Empire of the West - gave him right. He managed to
"
28 THE EVENT
I outwit the Pope who, imprudently forgetting that Otto was also one
d of Melusine's descendants and thus a priori a traitor, crowned him.
Right away he proceeded to betray the Holy See's Italian policy; he
r was excommunicated twice, in 1210 and 1211, and he is still so on
I July 27, 1214.
Following the advice of Philip Augustus, the Pope has had another
king elected in Germany to oppose Otto: he is the Staufen Frederick
who was crowned in 1213 at age fifteen in the cathedral of Mainz.
Contested in his kingdom, pursued by the divine vengeance that the
Bishop of Rome calls upon his head, the excommunicated and
deposed Emperor is at Bouvines because, once more, he has taken the
bait of the English King's deniers. But he has also come because he
knows that he will meet here his own enemy - the strongest one, the
principal obstacle to his triumph - King Philip of France whose
intrigues everywhere sap his power and of whose pretensions to set
'II himself up as Charlemagne's true heir he is well aware.
Otto is surrounded by his House, by an abundant and valorous
infantry which he was able to recruit in the Rhine and Meuse regions
where there are plenty of adventurers. He has been joined by some
high nobles of these regions of the Empire where Ghibellines are
disliked: Old Saxony, Basse-Lorraine. They are the Duke of Brabant
who is his father-in-law - but who is also Philip Augustus's son-in-
law and is wavering, liable to give Otto the slip at any time - the
"Hairy" Count of Holland, and four other Saxon and Rhineland
counts who are the most loyal. Each has brought along a strong team
J'j of knights.
At Otto of Brunswick's side, there are yet three other princes, but
they do not come from the Empire. They are not allied to the King of
! Germany through kinship, friendship, or vassalic loyalty, but through
the force of circumstance. They are with him only because of their
shared hatred for Philip Augustus and the subsidies of the King of
England. The Count of Salisbury, William, nicknamed Longsword,
natural son of Henry II, John Lackland's half-brother, is the sword-
rattler of the family. Twenty years previously he had been given the
opportunity to be in charge of the champions' game in the Kingdom
of England when Richard Lionheart assigned him the task of
organizing tournaments. In 1214, this blusterer is growing old. In
contrast, Ferrand, Count of Flanders, is a young man, twenty-eight
years old and full of energy. Son of the King of Portugal, he holds the
county through his wife and has never consoled himself from being
forced, directly after his marriage two years previously, to hand over
to his new lord as succession tax the castellanies of Aire and Saint-
Omer in order to be received into the homage of the King of France
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 29
and instated in his fief. Since then he has fulfilled his feudatory service
poorly. The previous year, King Philip ravaged his land: Ferrand
hates him.
The third count is the Count of Boulogne, Renaud of Dammartin.
He comes from a lineage holding one of the fortified castles of He-de"
France and his grandfather has held the office of chamberlain in the
Capetian House. Renaud was himself brought up there. Of the same
age as Philip Augustus, he had been his childhood companion and
received the arms of knighthood from his hands. In the ferment of
youth he betrayed his friend, godfather and lord, for the first time and
naturally was received with open arms by the King of England. Where
else could he have gone? The Plantagenet court was the recourse of
every deserter; his father had himself taken refuge there. However,
Philip very soon gave Renaud his friendship again and, to keep him,
had him marry his own cousin, Mary of Chatillon. But in 1190,
Renaud sent his spouse back: a superb prize had appeared on the
horizon. It was the not-so-young widow of the Count of Boulogne. All
of high society "youth" were coveting her and preened in front of her.
Renaud took her from in front of the very nose of Arnoul of Guines
and thus became count. This fantastic catch gave birth to a collection
of major grudges, of those inter-lineage hatreds so often fed by the
hazards of matrimonial strategy and motivating a great part of
knightly behavior. These grudges now pitted against him not only
the Count of Guines but also the Count of Saint-Pol and the whole
Dreux family. This animosity explains in great part the Count of
Boulogne's attitude toward the House of France: since then, he feels
surrounded by traps. This handsome man and very strong knight,
master of the most convenient port for the passage to England,
breeder of the best steeds, lord of the cold seas and the best herring
fisheries, and who at Bouvines sports two whalebones on top of his
helmet, has for a long time tacked about between the two kingdoms.
Ten years previously he was still vigorously serving Philip Augustus in
Normandy, helping to take Chateau-Gaillard. The King of France
showered him with favors, married. his niece to Renaud's brother, and
betrothed his newborn second son, Philip Hurepel, to Renaud's
daughter. Boulogne was worth it. And yet, for the last five years, it is
Renaud of Dammartin, henceforth assured of Capetian enmity, who
has been the go-between and has cemented the alliance between King
'john, Otto, and all those wronged by Philip.
Of all the bodies of knights grouped behind each banner in the
camp of the coalitidn as well as that of the other side, it is the knights
of Flanders that we see best: they provided the majority of the
Bouvines prisoners whose names we know thanks to the detailed
30 THE EVENT THE STAGE AND THE CAST 31
accounting of the ransoms. Some figures emerge from this: they are
Gauthier of Ghistelle, Buridan of Fumes, and Arnoul of Audenarde COUNTY OF
who in 1212 had opposed Ferrand's marriage to the heiress of the FLANDERS
county and who is often seen in England. A special place must be
given to Hugh of Boves, cadet son in a cadet branch of the lineage of
the Sires of Marle and Coucy, again from Picardy, whose leaders are
on the Capetian side at Bouvines. Hugh seeks his fortune; he has
killed one of King Philip's provosts and had to run away on that
account. Where else should he go but to John Lackland? He is the
manager of the English treasury: he distributes bonuses and pay. In
everyone's eyes he is the king of the mercenaries.
These latter, in the camp of evil, on the damned side and on this
side only, appear in full light. Shoulder to shoulder with the King of
Germany's foot soldiers. and the strong units from the Flemish
communes, the Brabancons fight on foot,' in compact company, in a
thick phalanx as these professionals of the killing war know how.
God hates them. He will punish them. Two years later He will
eventually take care of Hugh of Boves, the one who pays them, by
drowning him in the sea. But at the moment, the narrative shows
them in the particular service of Renaud of Boulogne, this splendid
pervert who openly brings concubines along. He uses the mercenaries
as a rampart, as the last refuge of his wickedness.
Among the combatants on the evil side, just as on that of the good,
multiple solidarities hold each of the regional chivalries, cavalry
corps, communal bands, and mercenary companies firmly together.
But there are no real ties between these solid granules. On this day
o 5 km
and in this place they have only gathered because of the lure of t I

money, rancor, the desire to satisfy old grudges, the concern to fend
off planned vengeances. Such are the Blacks: imperfectly united
because of the contradictions of their cause. It is the Whites' play and
they win.
The scene is at Bouvines, near the bridge. The bridge is of crucial
import. At this period it, along with the road that runs away from
Tournai and the Hainaut region to the east, toward Arras and Picardy
to the north, is the only means of crossing the valley of the Marcq, a
wide fracture cluttered with stagnant water and cut in between
tablelands. It is a difficult passage, particularly when it has rained a
lot in the course of winter and spring as is the case in 1214. At this
crossing point, established on this spot since prehistoric times, there is
a village in the lordship of the monks of Saint-~mand, a cluster of
trees, a chapel, and, at a distance by the edge of the depression, the
monastery of Cysoing founded in Carolingian times.
Figure 1 Bouvines and the surrounding region
To cross the bridge, to block it, meant to erect a safe barrier, to be
sheltered; one could then stop, set up camp, recoup, see what was
coming - which is what Philip Augustus had already done two days
previously. But there is a plateau ahead of the bridge, one mile wide
and five miles long; it lies on the side of the rising sun. It is surrounded
by woods at its edges, its center Cs occupied by coutures, large parcels
of good wheat-growing soil that have begun to be harvested on July 27,
and it is suitable for ample gallops. The landscape has a Picardian
feel, but at this time the area belongs to the county of Flanders.
Eastward, a few kilometers away, the border between the kingdom of
France and the Emp~e lies along the Escaut river while westward,
barely farther away, is the Artois region where Philip is at home in
what was his first wife's inheritance and which is now his eldest son's
 32 THE EVENT
seigniory. At Bouvines, the Flemish, Imperial, and Capetian lands
meet.
Here, between noon and five o'clock in the afternoon, the tight knot
of the political intrigues woven during the past years in Europe will be
cut with a single blow. The real movers of these conflicts are the
rancor and greed of band leaders, individual passions, family matters,
repudiations, adultery, unforgotten affronts, broken promises, betrayed
friendship, the drive to take, to surpass others, to throw a rival down
I. for the satisfaction of kindly helping him to his feet. In the interest of
a lineage, a House, a patrimony, these conflicts pit against each other
men who are ill-tempered and unscrupulous, greedy and munificent,
and who, ever since their departure from the world of women,
confront each other everywhere in a permanent competition.
Bouvines is a duel between jealous men who have come here for the
pleasure of a free-for-all.
Nonetheless we can legitimately speak of politics here. In the West,
the slow process of emergence from primitiveness and poverty has led
to the gradual strengthening of the power of certain seigniors. They
are the ones who are able to collect money, always in greater and
greater quantity, at fairs, ports, large cities, and on merchants' routes.
I! I
Religious establishments and merchants who are in need of peace
willingly lend deniers to these lords. They are served by clerks who
are learning to count and to keep books and whose intellectual
training enables them to hold less crude ideas on the nature of
sovereignty. Thus some of these princes, heirs of the old power
l of judgment and punishment over a whole region, have succeeded
I in reclaiming prerogatives which the splintering process we refer
l to as feudalism had rendered ineffectual for so long. The turmoil
which, under the pretext of honor, causes small swarms of pillaging
cavaliers on the look-out for any plundering opportunity to burst
forth out of every castle each spring has begun, to some extent, to be
kept in check by a count, a duke, or a king. Henceforth, this leader
has the means to enforce respect for the ethics of vassalage and the
obligation of fealty, to better attach the lesser seigniors to his person,
to assemble all the knights of a given region for the common good, to
impose his arbitral decisions, to punish felons, to command from afar
through paid intermediaries, and, because he gives more, because he
can pay soldiers, to make himself obeyed. This man's horizon is much
less limited than previously. His behavior does not differ much from
that of his band's rank and file; almost all lii's decisions, just like
theirs, are motivated by the drive for power and by envy. But
his adversaries measure up to his means; they are masters of
11
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 33
principalities just as he is. Thus, without changing nature, war takes
on another dimension.
In the time period we are dealing with, five issues are uppermost
among these princes' preoccupations. Three of them concern the
whole of Christendom; they have a strong religious coloration and
cause all gazes to turn toward the periphery. Of these issues, the Holy
Land problem is by far the primary one in peoples' minds because it
remains unresolved and is becoming worse. Neither the 1190
Crusade, nor the Fourth Crusade of 1202, which was sidetracked into
the wondrous sacking of Constantinople, have succeeded in taking
Jerusalem from the Infidel. The Pope intends to take care of this
problem first. To this end, we see him exhaust himself trying to
reduce discord within God's people: it is crucial that knights cease
fighting each other, cease amusing themselves by destroying each
other, so that all together they can set out in hot pursuit of the
miscreants and beat them. A related problem is that of containing the
presence of the Moors in Spain; it has just been resolved by a battle,
that of Las Navas de Tolosa. The third problem is that of heresy, of
the Albigensian "buggery," this internal infection which threatens the
Faith and which has just been resolved by another battle, at Muret.
There are still two additional conflicts in which religion only plays the
surface role of weapon" pretext, or justification. These issues pit
against each other the four main powers of Christian Europe: the
Pope, the Emperor, the King of France and the King of England.
These are very old conflicts. Tangled up to the point of being
confused with one another, they have in the years preceding Bouvines
and through the effect of the progress of all things entered their most
acute phase.
The movement toward the concentration of power occurred
simultaneously in the principalities and in the Church. At the
threshold of the thirteenth century, the Church is completing the
process of taking on the appearance of a monarchy, one better put
together than all others. But it is a monarchy whose leader, Saint
Peter's successor, makes claim to the domination of the world and, in
the name of the primacy of the spiritual, to guide, admonish, punish,
if necessary depose all the princes of the world. Luther of Segni, who
in 1198 became Pope at age thirty-seven under the name of Innocent
III, is i:nore firmly convinced than his predecessors of this prominence
of the Roman See. He is better armed than ever to make it effective.
His legates are everywhere, embroiled in princely intrigues and
advocating peace in the interest of the crusade. Several sovereigns
have taken their principalities as fiefs from Saint Peter, in other
words, from the Pope. The most recent one to have done so is John
 J
34 THE EVENT
Lackland. However, besides the Bishop of Rome there is also
the Emperor, and his magistry is just as universal: advised by men
who have learned Roman law in the Bologna schools, he. calls and
claims himself Caesar's heir. The Pope makes the Emperor. Invested
with the power to tie and untie he can also undo him. But the
Emperor, ever since Charlemagne and Otto the Great, knows himself
to be entrusted by God to cleanse the Roman curia if necessary, if need
be to remove an unworthy pope, and, at any rate, to protect the
sovereign pontiff who in the City and its surroundings is but a small
contested seignior.
In the course of the previous fifty years the Italian interests of the
papacy have embittered secular rivals just as much as the drive
toward the consolidation of power and the solidification of
conflicting ideologies. Against Frederick Barbarossa's descendants
who are laying claim to the German crown, to the imperial diadem,
and to the domination of Northern Italy, and one of whom moreover
holds the kingdom of Sicily through inheritance, Innocent III has
supported the Guelfs, their rivals in Germany. He has backed'Otto of
Brunswick. We know of his disappointment and his about-face. The
excommunications he has heaped on Otto show the spite of a
gambler pulling out his cards. In 1214, against John Lackland's
nephew, he now plays the trump card of Frederick of Hohenstaufen.
It is at this point that Innocent Ill's schemes come to coincide with
those of Philip Augustus and that this first conflict connects with the
second one. The latter has been in play for a century and a half and is
worsening by the hour. Relations between the Capetian and his
wealthier vassal have been uneasy ever since the Duke of Normandy
became King of England. They became extremely strained when the
Plantagenet Count of Anjou extended his 'power over the Anglo-
Norman principality and then over the immense duchy of Aquitaine.
Since then, the King of Paris has been forced to strive to break up this
boundless power which threatens to overshadow his own. Since his
accession, Philip has pursued no other goal. It is in order to better
reach it that he came hurriedly back from the Holy Land, engineered
a rapprochement with the Staufen; and has worn himself out each
summer waging war here and there against Richard Lionheart who
I
held the upper hand until his death. But afterwards; 'against John
"Bluntsword," the King of France has felt himself to be in better
position. He makes use of feudal law to the hilt. On the first occasion,
John Lackland is condemned for felony by the Capetian tribunal
which pronounces the confiscation of his fiefs. Philip rushes to
execute the sentence; he succeeds in taking Normandy and Anjou,
which is why he is called Augustus.
THE STAGE AND THE CAST 35
Even though disinherited, the King of England holds his ground,
and attracts all the French barons who have distanced themselves
from their lord because of fear, spite, or in the hope of blackmail. He
also collects from everywhere the money which abounds in England
and which makes possible the waging of tougher wars. Disregarding
the anathemas which the Pope pronounces against him, he takes
money from the English Church. He also knows how to fan the spite
of Renaud of Boulogne and Ferrand of Flanders, he manipulates
Otto, wins over to his cause all the hard-working knights of the Low
Countries with promises of higher pay and the lure of loot, and thus
puts together a substantial military force that will threaten his rival
from the north. As for him, whose father is from Anjou and whose
mother is from Aquitaine, he will attack from the south.
In the year 1213, the pieces fall into place. Philip reaches an accord
with Innocent III and brings Ingeborg back to his side to satisfy him.
The Pope declares King John fallen and assigns England to the
Capetian who makes ready to cross the sea. It is then that Count
Ferrand, shedding his mask, defects. The overseas expedition is
canceled: at the last moment, John Lackland grovels in front of the
Holy Father's envoys. Thus the King of France's host goes off to
ravage Flanders. As usual this is a plundering expedition which leads
Philip to realize how resilient his adversary is: Philip burns Lille, then
Cassel and Douai, but loses his fleet and the city of Tournai while
Ferrand and Renaud drive their horses all the way to the outskirts of
Arras. In February 1214 it is learned that John has just landed at La
Rochelle with numerous troops and fistfuls of deniers: he wants to
take Anjou back. But Philip Augustus's hurried approach is enough to
make him run away to Saintonge. The King of France is too prudent
to pursue him. At the end of April, Philip leaves his son Louis with the
young chivalry at Chinon while he himself goes north to face the
other threat. He calls up his comrades in Picardy, in Ponthieu, in
Artois: this new summer, they will plunder the Flemish countryside
once more. At the beginning of July, Otto leaves Aix-la-Chapelle. He
is at Nivelle on July 12. On July 21 the money for the soldiers' pay
arrives from England. Two days later, Philip rides from Peronne to
Douai. His army camps at Bouvines on July 25 and the next day
enters Tournai. That morning, Otto, together with the Count of
Flanders and the Count of Boulogne, is three miles south, in
Mortagne at the confluence of the Scarpe and Escaut rivers. The King
of France then finds out the exact location of his enemies. He calls in
his council: his cousins, the dukes, the counts, the knights of his
mesnie; each takes turn in voicing his opinion. The one which prevails
is not to push forward in difficult terrain with such a strong army at
 36 THE EVENT

the rear, but to retreat toward France at dawn. Prudently the army
will cross the bridge of Bouvines. It will stop near Lille behind the
shelter of the swamps to gage the wind.

This prologue was necessary. Let us now hear the main witness.
The Day

,I And now we would like to write as best we can of King Philip's

'1 glorious victory.v'
I In the year of Our Lord 1214, at the time when King John of
ri
England was warring in Poitou, as we have said earlier, and that he
II 1 fled, him and the whole of his host, at the approach of My Lord
Louis, Otto, the damned and excommunicated Emperor whom King
John of England had retained against King Philip, assembled his host
in Hainaut at the castle of Valenciennes, in the land of Count Ferrand
who had allied himself against his liege lord. There King John sent to
him, at his expense and in his pay, noble combatants and knights of
high valor: Renaud the Count of Boulogne, William Longsword,
Count of Chester, the Count of Salisbury, the Duke of Limburg, the
Duke of Brabant who had wed Otto's daughter, Bernard of Ostemale,
Othe of Tecklemburg, the Count Conrad of Dortmund and Gerard of
Ramrode, and many other counts and barons from Germany,
Brabant, Hainaut, and Flanders. The good King Philip assembled on
his part his chivalry at the castle of Peronne, only as much of it as he

1 It is perhaps useful to remind the reader that writing in the thirteenth

century was a genuine carrier of the spoken word and that all texts, even in
prose as this one is, were written to be read out loud. Rhythm is of crucial
import and Andree Duby, who has adapted this text, has done her best to
preserve it.
2 Translator's note: Unfortunately the original rhythm, particularly where
it consists in beginning sentences with a verb each time the action quickens,
could not be retained in English prose. Consequently, the translator has in
the main rendered the text into straightforward modern English while
retaining a few archaic words and ambiguities. These can still be found listed
in present-day English dictionaries but they closely parallel the original
French text and thus give an indication of.the world view of its author.
38 THE EVENT
was able because his son Louis was warring at that time in Poitou
against King John and had with him a great part of France's chivalry.
On the day after Magdalen day, the King left Peronne and entered in
great strength into Ferrand's land; he went through Flanders while
burning and destroying everything left and right and in this manner
arrived at the city of Tournai which the Flemings had taken by
trickery the previous year and damaged badly. But the King sent
Brother Guerin and the Count of Saint-Pal to the city and they took it
back quite easily. Otto left Valenciennes and went to a castle called
Mortagne, This castle was taken by force and destroyed by King
Philip's host after they had taken Tournai which was only six miles
away.
The first week after the feast day of Saint Philip and Saint James,
the King proposed attacking his enemies, but his barons advised him
not to, as the passes to them were narrow and difficult to cross.
Because of this, he changed his mind on the advice of his barons and
ordered that they backtrack and find a more level way into the county
of Hainaut and destroy it completely. The following day, which was
thus the sixth calend of August, the King left Tournai and was
longing to rest himself and his host that same night in a castle called
Lille. But things went differently than planned as Otto had left the
castle of Mortagne that same morning and, as hard as he could, rode
after the King in battle order. The King neither knew nor thought his
enemies were thus coming after him. It so happened by chance or by
the will of God that the Viscount of Melun along with other lightly
armed knights detached himself from the King's host and rode
toward those parts from which Otto was coming. And, detached also
from the host and riding with him was Brother Guerin, the Elect of
Senlis (Brother Guerin, we call him, because he was a practising
brother of the Hospital and still wore its habit), a wise man, of sound
counsel and with marvelous foresight for things to come. These two
went away from the host for about three miles and rode together till
they climbed a high hill from which they were able to see clearly their
enemies' battalions moving fast and in fighting formation. When they
saw this, the Elect Cuerin left immediately and made haste to return
to the King, but the Viscount of Melun remained on the spot along
with his knights who were rather lightly armed. As soon as he reached
the King and the barons, the Elect Guerin told them that their enemies
were fast arriving in battle order and that he had seen the horses
covered, the banners unfurled, the sergeants and the foot soldiers up
front which is a sure sign of battle.
After the King heard this, he ordered the whole host to stop and
then convened the barons and sought advice on what to do, but they
I
~
THE DAY 39
did not much favor waging battle and advocated riding on. When
Otto and his people came to a small stream, they crossed it a few at a
time because the passage was difficult. After they had all crossed to
the other side, they pretended to go toward Tournai. Then the French
started to say that their enemy was going away towards Tournai. But
at that moment Brother Cuerin felt the very opposite and cried and
insisted with conviction that the thing to do was to fight or to retreat
in shame and loss. Finally the opinion of the many prevailed over that
of the one. They continued on their way and rode thus to a small
bridge called the bridge of Bouvines, between the place named
Sanghin and the village called Gisoing. The greater part of the host
had already crossed the bridge, and the King had taken off his arms
but had not yet crossed the bridge, as his enemies believed. Their plan
was, had the King crossed the bridge, to throw themselves on those
whom they found crossing it and kill them or take them prisoner.
As the King was resting for a while in the shade of an ash-tree
because he was already quite worn out as much from riding as from
bearing his arms (quite close to this place was a small chapel founded
in honor of My Lord Saint Peter), messengers of those who were in
the last battalion came to the host. Horrified, they were yelling with
terrible cries that their enemies were coming and were readying to
wage hard battle on those who were in the last echelon, and that the
Viscount of Melun and those with him who were lightly armed and
the bowmen who were containing·the enemy's arrogance and bearing
his assault were in great danger and could not restrain for very long
his temerity and forcefulness. Then the host started to become excited
and the King entered the chapel of which we spoke above and offered
a short prayer to Our Lord. After coming out, he had himself hastily
armed and he jumped on his steed, as lively and in as great spirits as if
he had been on his way to a wedding or a celebration to which he had
been invited. Then the cry "To arms, barons! To arms!" was heard in
the fields. Trumps and trumpets began to rise up and the battalions
which had already crossed the bridge began to return. The Oriflamme
of Saint Denis which was carried at the front line of the battle, ahead
of all others, was then called back. But so that it would not have to
return in.haste, it was not awaited as the King at full gallop was first
to return and he put himself in the front rank of the first battalion, so
that there was nobody between him and his enemy.
When Otto and his people saw that the King had returned, which
they had not expected, they were surprised and overtaken by sudden
fear. They then turned to the right side of the road so that they were
going west and spread themselves out to the extent that they covered
the greater part of the field. They came to a stop facing north so that
40 THE EVENT
the sun shone directly into their eyes, a sun which was hotter and
brighter on this day than previously. The King called, up his battalions
and positioned them in the fields right in front of his enemy an.d
facing south in such a way that the Fr~nch had the sun a.t. their
shoulders. Thus were the battalions orgamzed and evenly positioned
on both sides. In the middle of this arrangement was the King in the
front rank of his battalion: at his sides were William des Barres, the
flower of chivalry, Bartholomew of Roye, an elder and wise man,
Gauthier the Young, the chamberlain, a wise man and good knight of
sound counsel, Peter Mauvoisin, Gerard La Truie, Stephen of
Longchamp, William of Garlande, Henry the Count of Bar, a young
man old with courage, noble in strength and virtue - he was the
king's cousin and had recently received the county after the death of
his father - and many other good-knights whose names are not given
here of marvelous virtue and marvelous ability in the use of arms. All
these had been put in the King's battalion specially to protect his
person and because of their great loyalty a?-d rep~tation f~r
outstanding prowess. On the other side was Otto m the middle of his
people; he had had raised as a standard a golden eagle above a dragon
attached to the top of a tall pole.
Before the start of the battle, the King addressed his barons and his
people; and even though they already had the heart and the will to do
well, he gave them a short sp~ech in the f?llowing wo~ds: "Lor,d
barons and knights, we are puttmg all our faith and hope into God s
hands. Otto and his people have been excommunicated by our Father
the Apostle because they are the enemies and destroyers of things holy
of the Church. The deniers at their disposal and with which they are
paid have been taken through the tears of the poor and by stealing
from clerks and churches. But we are Christians and follow the
dictates of the Holy Church, and even though we are sinners like
other men, we nonetheless submit to God and the Holy Church. We
guard and defend it with all our ability and this is why we must
fearlessly trust in the compassion of Our Lord who will allow us to
overcome our and His enemies and to win." When the Kinghad thus
spoken, barons and knights asked for his blessing and he, with a
raised hand, prayed so as to bring the benediction of Our Lord over
them. They had the trumps and trumpets sound and then attacked
their enemies with great and marvelous daring.
At this time and place behind the King were his chaplain who is the
writer of this account and a clerk, and as soon as they heard the
sound of the horns they began to chant and pray out loud the psalm
Benedictus Dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad proelium,
etc., the whole of it till the end, and then Exurgat Deus, the whole of
THE DAY 41
it till the end, and Domine, in virtute tua laetabitur Rex, the best they
could as tears and sobs hindered them greatly. Then with pure
devotion they recalled to God the honor and freedom which the Holy
Church enjoys under King Philip's rule, and in contrast, the shame
and indignities which she suffers and has suffered at the hands of
Otto and King John of England. Through the gifts and promises of
the latter, all these enemies had been worked up against the King in
his own kingdom and some of them were fighting their liege lord
whose welfare they should rather have been protecting against all
men.
The first assault of the battle did not occur where the King was as
before those in his echelon and proximity could start the fray, others
were already fighting against Ferrand and his people on the right side
of the field without the King being aware of it. The first line of the
French battalion was positioned and organized as we have described
above and extended 1,040 paces across the field. In this battalion was
Brother Guerin, the Elect of Senlis, fully armed, not to do battle but to
admonish and exhort the barons and other knights to fight for the
honor of God, of the King, and of the kingdom, and for the defense of
their own welfare. There were also Eudes, the Duke of Burgundy,
Mathew of Montmorency, the Count of Beaumont, the Viscount of
Melun and other noble combatants, and the Count of Saint-Pol
whom some suspected of having made agreements 'with their enemy
in .the past. And because he was well aware of this suspicion, he
quipped to Brother Guerin that the King was to find him to be a good
traitor today. In this same battalion were 180 combatants from
Champagne which the Elect Guerin had organized: he moved some
of them from the front to the rear as he felt them to be cowardly
and fainth'earted, while those he felt to be courageous and eager to
fight, in whose prowess he had faith and confidence, he put in the
first echelon and told them: "Lord knights, the field is large,
spread yourselves out so that the enemy does not surround you and
because it is not fitting that some become the shields of others.
Rather, -arrange yourselves in -such a way that you can all fight
together-at the same time, all in one front." After he said this, he sent
ahead, on the Count of Saint-Pol's advice, 150 mounted sergeants to
start the battle. He did this with the aim that the noble combatants of
France, whom we have named above, would find their enemy
somewhat-agitated and worried.
But the Flemings and the Germans, who were very eager to fight,
greatly scorned being first challenged by sergeants instead of knights.
Because of this, they did not deign to move from their position but
waited and received them very harshly; many of their horses were
 42 THE EVENT
slain and they suffered many injuries but only two were wounded
unto death. These sergeants were born in the Soissons valley; they
were full of prowess and great courage and were fighting no less
virtuously on foot than on horseback.
Gautier of Ghistelle and Buridan, who were knights of noble
prowess, were exhorting the knights of their echelon to battle and
were reminding them of the exploits of their friends and ancestors
with, it seemed, no more fear than if they had been jousting in a
tournament. After unhorsing and striking down some of the above
mentioned sergeants, they left them and turned toward the middle of
the field to fight the knights. They were then met by the battalion of
the Champenois, and they attacked and fought each other valorously.
When their lances broke, they 'Pulled out their swords and exchanged
wondrous blows. Into this fray appeared Peter of Rerny and the men
of his company; by force they captured and brought away this
Gauthier of Ghistelle and John Buridan. But a knight of their group
called Eustache of Malenghin began to yell out loud with great
arrogance "Death, death to the French!" and the French began to
surround him. One stopped him and took hold of his head between
his arm and his chest, and then ripped his helmet off his head, while
another struck him to his heart with a knife between the chin and the
ventaille and made him feel through great pain the death with which
he had threatened the French through great arrogance. After this
Eustache of Malenghin had thus been slain, and Gautier of Ghistelle
and Buridan had been taken prisoners, the daring of the French
doubled; they put aside all their fears and made use of all their
strength as if they were assured of victory.
Following the mounted sergeants whom the Elect had sent ahead to
f
t!1 start the battle, the Count Gautier of Saint-Pol moved with the
knights of his echelon who were all hand-picked and of noble
prowess. He threw himself unto his enemies as fiercely as a hungry
eagle throws himself unto a crowd of doves. Many he hit and many
were those who hit him as soon as he plunged into the fray. There, the
bravery of his heart and the prowess of his body came to the fore as
he-struck down all those who reached him, and he killed men and
horses indifferently and without taking any prisoners. Along with his
people, he struck and slaughtered left and right so much that he beat a
path all the way through the crowd of his enemies, then thiew himself
back in from another side and encircled them so that they were in the
middle of the battle.
After the Count of Saint-Pol, the Count of Beaumont made his
move with as great courage. Mathew of Montmorency and his
people, the Duke Eudes of Burgundy who had many a good knight in
THE DAY 43
his troop, all threw themselves into the press eager and burning to
fight, and waged marvelous battle upon their enemies. The Duke of
Burgundy, a corpulent man of phlegmatic temperament, fell on the
ground as his steed was killed under him. When his people saw him
fall, they gathered all around him and soon had him climb on another
horse. After getting back up, he felt greatly upset by his fall and said
he would avenge this shame; he brandished his lance and spurred his
horse, then threw himself with great anger into the thickest of his
enemies. He paid no attention to where he was striking or whom he
was fighting, but avenged his misfortune equally on everyone as
though each of his enemies had slain his horse.
The Viscount of Melun, who had in his troop knights of renown,
practised-in the use of arms, was fighting at the same time. He attacked
his enemies from another side in the same manner that the Count of
Saint-Pol had done; he went all the way through them and came back
into this battle from another point. In this fray, Michael of Harmes
was hit with a lance between the hauberk and the thigh. He was
pinned to his saddle bow and horse, and both he and the horse were
thrown to the ground. Hugh of Maleveine and many others were
thrown as their horses were slain, but out of great virtue they jumped
up and fought with no less prowess on their feet than on their horses.
The Count of Saint-Pol, who had fought very strongly and for a
long time and was already quite worn out by the many blows which
he had given and received, withdrew from the press in order to rest,
catch his breath, and regain his composure. He had his face turned
toward his enemies. As he was thus resting, he noticed that one of his
knights had been so well surrounded by his enemies that he could not
see an opening through which he could come to him. Even though the
count had not yet caught his breath, he put on his helmet, "laid his
head on his horse's neck, and hugged it firmly with both arms; then
he pricked his spurs and in this manner reached his knight through all
his enemies. Then he stood up on his stirrups, drew his sword, and
distributed blows so great that he split and broke the press of his
enemies with his marvelous virtue. After having freed his knight from
their hands at great danger to himself, through great courage or folly,
he returned to his battalion and his troop. As those who witnessed the
following have since recounted, at this point he came into great
mortal danger as he was hit by twelve lances at the same time, and
yet, with the help of his outstanding virtue, no one could bring either
him or his horse down. After accomplishing this marvelous feat and
having recouped with his knights who had been resting during this
time, he pulled himself together, wrapped himself in his arm or, and
threw himself back into the thickest of his enemies.
44 THE EVENT
In this place and in this hour, so intense and heated had the
fighting, which had already lasted three hours, been on both sides that
Pallas, the goddess of battles, was fluttering above the combatants as
if she did not yet know to whom she should grant victory. At the end
she piled up all the weight of the battle on Ferrand and his people.
Ferrand, struck to the ground, injured and hurt with many large
wounds, was taken prisoner and tied up with many of his knights. He
had fought so long that he was as if half-dead and could not endure
fighting any more when he surrendered to Hugh of Mareuil and his
brother John. As soon as Ferrand was taken, all those of his party
who were fighting in this part of the field fled or were killed or
captured.
While Ferrand was thus brought to defeat, -the Oriflamme of Saint
Denis returned, followed by the legions from the communes which
had gone forward to the tents earlier, especially the communes of
Corbie, Amiens, Arras, Beauvais, and Compiegne, and they rushed to
the King's battalion toward the spot where they saw the royal
standard with the azure field. and golden fleurs-de-lis which a knight
called Galon of Montigny was carrying on that day. This Galon was a
very good knight and very strong, but he was not a wealthy man. The
communes passed in front of the King, opposite Otto and his
battalion. But the members of his echelon who were knights of great
prowess soon forced them to retreat to the King's battalion; they
gradually scattered them all and made their way through them to the
point where they came very close to the King's echelon. When
William des Barres, Guy Mauvoisin, Gerard La Truie, Stephen of
Longchamp, William of Garlande, John of Rouvray, Henry the Count
of Bar, and the other noble combatants who had been specially put in
the King's battalion to protect him saw that Otto and the Teutons of
his battalion were coming straight to the King with the sole aim of
seeking his person, they put themselves in front of him so as to meet
and curb the Teutons' temerity. They left behind their backs the King
for whom they were concerned. While they were fighting Otto and
the Germans, the Teuton foot soldiers who had gone on ahead
suddenly reached the King and, with lances and iron hooks, brought
him to the ground. If the outstanding virtue of the special armor with
which his body was enclosed had not protected him, they would have
killed him on the spot. But a few of the knights who had remained
with him, along with Galon of Montigny who repeatedly twirled the
standard to call for help and Peter Tristan who of his own accord got
off his steed and put himself in front of the blows so as to protect the
King, destroyed and killed all those sergeants on foot. The King
jumped up and mounted his horse more nimbly than anyone would
THE DAY 45
have thought possible. After the King had remounted and the rabble
who had brought him down had all been destroyed and killed, the
King's battalion engaged Otto's echelon. Then began the marvelous
fray, the slaying and slaughtering by both sides of men and horses as
they were all fighting with wondrous virtue. Killed right in front of
the King was Stephen of Longchamp, valorous and loyal knight of
total dedication; he was struck by a knife through the eye hole of his
helmet all the way to the brain. In this battle the King's enemies made •.
.
~
use of a type of weapon which had never been seen before. They had
long and slender knives with three sharp edges from the point to the
guard, and they were using these in the battle as swords and glaives.
But.through the grace of God, the glaives and swords of the French
along with their virtue, which never faltered, overcame the cruelty of
their enemies' new weapons. They fought so strongly and long that
they forced the whole of Otto's battalion to fall back and retreat so
close to him that Peter Mauvoisin, who was more powerful at arms
than wise in the ways of the world, took him by the bridle and tried to
pull him out of the fray. But he saw that he could not accomplish his
aim on account of the press and the great number of his people who
closely surrounded him. Gerard La Truie, who was nearby, struck
him in the middle of the chest with a knife which he held unsheathed
in his hand, and when he saw that he could nor pierce through
(because of the thickness of the armor with which warriors of our
time are equipped and which is impenetrable), he gave him a second
blow .to make up for the failure of the first. He thought that he was
going to hit Otto's body but instead he met the horse's head which
was high and raised; he dealt it a blow right in the eye and the knife,
thrust with great virtue, slipped all the way to its brain. The horse,
feeling this great blow, took fright and began to struggle strongly. He
turned back towards the area he had come from in such a way that
OUo showed his back to our knights and ran away on the spot. He
left as prize for his enemies the eagle and the standard and everything
he had brought to the field. When the King saw him thus leave, he
told his people: "Otto is running away, from now on we will not see
his face." He had not fled very far before his horse dropped dead.
Then a fresh one was brought to him and after mounting it he took
flight as fast as he could, as he could withstand no more the virtue of
the knights of France, seeing that William des Barres had twice
grabbed him by the neck but could not get a good hold because the
horse was strong and skittish and because of the press of his
followers.
At the place and time that Otto fled, the battle was wondrously
violent and heated on both sides. His knights were fighting so
I
 46 THE EVENT
strongly that they had thrown down William des Barres and slain his
horse as he had gone further forward than the others. This happened
because Gauthier the Young, William of Garlande, their lances broken
and their glaives bloodied, and Bartholomew of Roye, a good knight
and wise man, and the others who were with them, judged and said
that it was dangerous to leave the King alone behind them, following
unprotected. On this account, they did not wish to go as deeply into
the fray as the Barrois had done, who was on foot against his enemies
and, as usual, defended himself with marvelous virtue. But because a
I man alone on foot cannot last very long against such a great number,
I,
he would have ended dead or captured had it not been for Thomas of
Saint- Valery, a noble knight, powerful at arms, who appeared there
with fifty knights and 2,000 sergeants and freed the Barrois from the
hands of his enemies.
There the battle waxed again because, as Otto was fleeing, the
noble knights of his battalion were fighting strongly. They were
n Bernard of Ostemale, who was a knight of great prowess, Count Othe
of Tecklemburg, Count Conrad of Dortmund, Gerard of.Randerode,
and many other knights, strong and daring combatants, whom Otto
,I had specially chosen for their great prowess to be at his side in the
battle and to protect his person. All these were fighting marvelously
r and were destroying and killing our people. Nevertheless, the French
overcame them and captured the two above mentioned counts and
Bernard of Ostemale and Gerard of Ramrode. The chariot on which
the standard was resting was destroyed, the dragon, broken and the
golden eagle, its wings torn off and in pieces, brought to the King.
Thus was Otto's battalion completely destroyed after he ran away.
Count Renaud of Boulogne who had been in the fray continually
was still fighting so strongly that no one could vanquish or overcome
him. He was using a new art of battle: he had set up a double row of
, well-armed foot sergeants pressed closely together in a circle in the
u
'1
•
,
manner of a wheel. There was only one entrance to the inside .of this
circle through which he went in when he wanted to catch his breath
or was pushed too hard by his enemies. He did this several times.
Count Renaud, Count Ferrand, and the Emperor Otto had sworn
before the start of the battle, as was learned later from the prisoners,
that they would turn neither to right nor to left, that they would fight
against no echelon but that in which the King was. And they had
planned on killing the King as soon as they captured him with the
intention, once the King was slain, of easily doing what they wanted
with the whole kingdom. Because of this pledge, they would at no
time engage anyone but the King's battalion. Ferrand, who had taken
this same oath, wanted to go directly towards the King and began to
THE DAY 47
do this but he could not because the battalion of the Champenois
blocked his way and fought so strongly that it thwarted his aim:
Count Renaud as well, avoiding all other battalions, engaged the
King's battalion and came directly to him at the start of the fray. But
then, when he came near him, he became horrified and, as some
believe, was overcome by a natural fear of his rightful lord. He turned
toward another part of the press and fought against Count Robert of
Dreux who was-in the same battalion and close to the King in a very
thick crowd.
Count Perron of Auxerre, who was the King's cousin, was fighting
virtuously for the King, but his son Philip, because he was Ferrand's
wife's cousin through his mother, was fighting against his father and
the French crown. This was because sin and the Enemy had caused
the hearts of some to be so blinded that, even if they had a father or
brothers and cousins in the King's party, the fear of God did not
prevent them from fighting and, if they could, they would have chased
away in shame and embarrassment their rightful lord and all of their
blood kinsmen whom they should have naturally loved.
Count Renaud had at first opposed doing battle even though he
ended up fighting more virtuously and longer than anyone else but, as
one who well knew the daring and prowess of the knights of France,
he had strongly advised against fighting. For this reason, Otto and his
people had suspected him of treason, and had he not consented to the
battle they would have made him prisoner and tied him up. He spoke
to Hugh of Boves about this just a moment before the battle: "Here is
the battle which you extol and advocate and which I put down and
advise against; it will come of this that you will run away as a bad
man and a coward and I will fight at the risk of my life knowing full
well that I will either be killed or captured." After saying this.ihe went
to the place assigned to his battalion and fought more strongly and
longer than anyone else of his party.
With all these events, the ranks of Otto's party were becoming
sparse as the Duke of Louvain, the Duke of Limburg, and Hugh of
Boves had already fled along with others in groups of fifty, forty and
various numbers, but Count Renaud was still fighting so strongly that
no one could tear him away from the battle. He had with him only six
knights who, rather than abandoning him, were fighting very strongly
at his side. At this point a courageous and daring sergeant by the
name of Peter of Tournelle, who was fighting on foot because his
enemies had killed his horse, went toward the count, lifted up the
covering of his horse, and struck it so well with his sword that he
plunged it to the guard all the way to the guts. Upon seeing this blow,
one of the knights who was fighting on the side of the count took him
,I
I 48 THE EVENT
,
• I
by the bridle and dragged him out of the press with great effort and
t
,i against his will. Then he took flight as best he could while Quenon of
Condune and his brother John pursued him and threw this knight to
! the ground. The count's horse dropped dead and the count fell in such
I and he was looked for and found amongst the dead. He was brought
a manner that his right leg was trapped under the horse's neck. At this
point Hugh and Gauthier of Fontaine and John of Rouvray appeared.
While they were arguing as to whom should take the count prisoner,
John of Nesle appeared on the scene. This John was a handsome
, knight and large of body, but his prowess matched neither the
I' handsomeness nor the amount of his body as he had fought no one in
the course of the whole day. So, along with his knights, he was
-I arguing with those who held the count as -he wanted to gain some
undeserved praise for thecapture of such a great man. In the end, he
would have succeeded in taking the count away from them if the Elect
Guerin had not appeared at the place. As soon as the count saw him,
he gave him his sword and surrendered to him, begging him to spare
his life. However, before the Elect had arrived at the place where the
knights were fighting with each other, a boy named Commotus, as if
he had been a man of strength and great virtue, ripped the helmet off
the count's head and inflicted a-large wound on his head. Then he
lifted the side of his hauberk, thinking he would strike him in the
stomach, but the knife could find no entry as the iron chausses were
strongly sown to the hauberk. While they were thus holding him and
were forcing him to get up, he looked around and saw Arnoul of
Audenarde and some knights hurriedly coming to help him. Upon
seeing them come thus toward him, -he let himself,slide to the ground
!I and pretended not to be able to remain on his feet, with the hope that
this Arnoul would rescue him. But those around him were hitting him
with great blows and forced him to climb on a work-horse, and this
I Arnoul and all those who were with him were captured and
restrained.
After all the knights of the opposing party were dead or captured or
escaped through flight and the whole of Otto's mesnie had fled from
the field, there still remained in the field the 700 foot sergeants,
courageous and strong, born in the land of Brabant; they were those
who had been made into a wall and used as defense against the
onslaught of their enemy. The King noticed them and sent against
them Thomas of Saint-Valery, a noble praiseworthy knight who was,
as well, knowledgeable in letters. This Thomas had in his troop fifty
good and loyal knights, born in his country, and 2,000 foot sergeants.
After he and his followers had equipped themselves well, they threw
themselves on them as the hungry wolf throws himself on the sheep.
Even though they were very weary from fighting, both Thomas and his
THE DAY 49
followers, as they had participated in many engagements during the
day, they destroyed and took them all with marvelous prowess. A
wondrous thing came to light after this was accomplished. As he
counted his people after his victory he found only one to be missing,
to the tents and handed over to the doctors who cured him and made
him well in no time.
The King did not want our people to hunt further than a mile for
the men in flightbecause of the danger of poorly known paths and the
oncoming night and, also, so that the captured princes and the
wealthy men would not escape by some chance or be taken by force
from their guards. This was something the King was very worried
about. Thus trumps and trumpets sounded the return signal for those
who were still hunting, and when all the companies had returned
from the hunt they went to the tents with great joy and rejoicing.
(Oh the admirable clemency of the prince! Oh his incredible mercy
unheard of in this century!) After the King and the barons had
returned to the tents, on this very same evening he had brought to him
all the noble men who had been taken in battle. There were thirty of
them amongst whom were five counts and twenty-five men of such
high nobility that each carried his own banner in battle, this without
counting the other prisoners of lesser position. When they were all in
front of him, he gave them all their lives through the great kindness
and compassion of his heart; this even though all those who were
from his kingdom and were his liege men and who had conspired
against him and sworn to kill him and had acted on this, were guilty
and deserved to be beheaded according to the customs of the land.
(Indeed, just as an inflexible severity against rebels was burning in
him, clemency for those who submitted, as much and even more,
flowered in him. This was because his supreme intent always was to
spare the meek and defeat the haughty.) In chains and in ropes they
were loaded on carts to be taken to prisons in various locations. The
King departed the next day and returned to Paris.
When he reached Bapaume, he was told, either in truth or falsely,
that Count Renaud had sent a message to Otto. He was asking and
advising him to return to Ghent and there receive the fugitives and re-
arm his army so as to renew the battle with the help of the men of
Ghent and other enemies of the King. Upon hearing these words,
the King became very upset with the count. He then went into the
tower where Renaud and Count Ferrand, the two most powerful men
amongst his prisoners, were imprisoned. And, as he was possessed by
anger and resentment, he began to reproach him for all the favors he
had granted him and thus said that, as he was his liege man, he had
 THE EVENT
50
dubbed him into knighthood; as he was poor he had made him rich;
and, for all these privileges, he had returned ill for good. He and his
father, the Count Aubry of Dammartin, had turned to King Henry of
England and allied themselves with him to the detriment of the King
and the kingdom. And then, after this misdeed, when he wanted to
come back to him, the King forgave him everything and received him
in mercy and in love, and gave him the county of Dammartin which
had by right reverted back to the King as his father, the above
. mentioned Aubry, had misused it and lost it through judgment upon
allying himself with the King's enemy and dying in Normandy in his
service. And the King gave him the county of Boulogne in addition to
1
~
all this. After all these privileges, Renaud deserted him again and
allied himself with King Richard of England and remained in his
party as long as King Richard lived. After his death, Renaud came
back to him and he immediately. received him in friendship and, in
addition to the two counties he had already given him, gave him three
more: the counties of Mortain, Aumale, and Varennes. And then
Renaud, all these favors forgotten, worked up against him the whole
of England, the whole of Germany, the whole of Flanders, Hainaut,
and the whole of Brabant, and in the preceding year seized some of
the King's ships at the port of Damme. And then he did even worse as,
along with the King's other enemies, he solemnly swore to kill him
and fought bodily against him on the battlefield. And then he did even
worse still, as, after being granted his life by the King, after the King
through great compassion forgot all his misdeeds, Renaud, on top of
all the harm he had committed, asked Emperor Otto and the men
who had escaped from the press to rally the fugitives and start anew
the fight against him: "All of this harm," said the King, "you have
returned in exchange for all the good I did for you and yet I will not
take your life as I have granted it to you, but I will put you in such a
prison that you will not escape till you have expiated all these ills you
have caused me."
After the King had thus spoken to Count Renaud, he had him taken
to Peronne and put in a very strong prison and into iron chains which
•' I
were joined and interlaced with marvelous cleverness. The chain
which connected one chain to the other was so short that he could not
move by more than half a step, and through the middle of this small
chain passed a large one, ten feet long, from which another one was
tied to a large tree trunk which two men could barely move each time
he had to go and relieve himself. Ferrand was brought on horseback
to Paris and put in a new fortified tower, tall and strong, outside the
walls of the city, and which was called the Louvre Tower.
On the very day of the battle, William Longsword, Count of
THE DAY 51
Salisbury, was handed over to Count Robert of Dreux with the intent
that he give him back to his brother, King John of England, in
exchange for his son, who, as we have said earlier, he held in prison.
But King John, who hated his own flesh and blood and who as such
had slain his nephew and kept Eleanor, the sister of this Arthur, in
prison for twenty years, refused to give up a stranger in exchange for
his own brother. This makes one think of Merlin's lynx. Merlin,
while speaking about his father whom he was comparing to a lion,
said: "From him will be born a lynx driven to intrude everywhere, the
cause of the ruination of his own race. It is because of him that
Neustria will lose its two isles and be stripped of its external dignity."
Another part of the rest of the prisoners were put into the small forts
of the large bridge and the little bridge and the others were sent to
various prisons in the kingdom.
How right, just and irreproachable are your judgments, Oh Lord,
you who turn around the designs of princes, you who fail the
enterprises of peoples! You who tolerate evils so as to turn them into
good, you who postpone vengeance so as to allow time for the wicked
to convert, you who permit those refusing penance to be chastised
with a rod as worthy as it is deserved! You who, when the Bad
threaten to exterminate the Good, always turn their designs into their
opposites!
The King's enemies that were captured in battle had not only
conspired against him but had also through promises and gifts joined
and allied to them some of the King's own men such as Harvey the
Count of Nevers and all the high nobles of Outre Loire, all the
Mansins, the Angevins, and the Poitevins with the exception only of
William de la Roche, Seneschal of Anjou, and Johel of Mayenne. The
Viscount of Sainte-Suzanne and many other lords had already
promised their support to the King of England, but secretly till they
could be certain of the outcome of the battle as they feared Philip. The
King's enemies had already divided and shared out amongst
themselves all the kingdom of France, as if they had been assured of
victory, and the Emperor Otto had promised each a share: Count
Renaud of Boulogne was to have Peronne and, the whole of
Vermandois, Ferrand was to have Paris, and the others other
countries. He did not fail Count Renaud and Count Ferrand as
Ferrand ended up with Paris and Count Renaud with Peronne, but
not to their honor and glory but instead to their shame and
embarrassment.
All these things we have told and reported regarding their
presumptuousness and betrayal were told to the King by members of
their own party and witnesses to their council. We do not want to tell
 52 THE EVENT
anything about them and their deeds that goes against our conscience
but only what we believe to be absolutely true even though they are
enemies of the kingdom.
It has become common knowledge that the old Countess of
Flanders, aunt of Count Ferrand of Spain and daughter of the King of
Portugal, so that she was called both queen and countess, had wished
to know the outcome of the battle. She cast her fortune according to
the custom of the Spaniards who readily use this art and received the
~.I
following answer: "There will be fighting. The King will be thrown
down in the course of the battle and trampled under the horses'
hooves and have no sepulcher. And Ferrand will be welcomed in Paris
in a great procession after the victory." All these things could be seen
I
as truthful answers to one who so wishes, as everything did occur as
divination had predicted but with a double meaning in accordance
I themselves with the King. But the King who had experienced their
with the Devil's habit of always deceiving-in the end those who serve
I him and hiding by means of a fallacious amphibology a pronouncement
I that is nothing but deceptive.
How could one describe by word of mouth or feel in one's heart or
write on tablets or parchment, the applause, the felicitations, the
triumphant hymns, the population's innumerable dances of-joy, the
very great feast the people were giving the King as he returned to
France after the victory? The clerks were singing in the churches
sweet songs delightful in praise of Our Lord; the bells were pealing in
the abbeys and churches; the places of worship were solemnly
decorated inside and out with silken cloth; the streets and the houses
of the loyal towns were draped with wall hangings and adorned with
rich decorations; roads and paths were strewn with boughs of
alburnum, green saplings, and fresh flowers; the whole population,
high and low, men, women, old and young came running in large
groups to roadsides and crossings; peasants and reapers assembled,
their rakes and scythes on their shoulders (as this was the time of the
wheat harvest), to see and insult Ferrand in chains whom a short time
earlier they had feared in arms. Peasants, old women, and children
had no qualms about mocking and insulting him, and .took this
opportunity to taunt him about his equivocal name as it can be used
for both a man and a horse. It happened by chance that two horses of
the color calling for this kind of horse's name were carrying him in a
litter and so they were yelling as a taunt that two [errants were
carrying a third (errant and that Ferrand was en(erre,3 that he was so
enrage [enraged] that he stamped his foot and through conceit had
3 Translator's note: In Old French, tied in iron chains and/or iron
shackles.
THE DAY 53
rebelle [rebelled] against his lord. So much acclaim was given to the
King and so much shame heaped on Ferrand all the way to Paris! The
bourgeois and all the schoolmen, the clergy, and the people singing
hymns and canticles went to meet the King and showed the great joy
in their hearts through visible actions as they made a feast and
celebration without compare. And the day was not long enough for
them as they were celebrating as much by night as by day with so
many lights that night was as bright as day. Thus the feast lasted
continuously for seven days and seven nights. The schoolmen, in
particular, untiringly and ceaselessly were showing their joy at great
expense through banquets, chorales, dances, and songs.
It did not take long for the Poitevins who had secretly conspired
against the King to be wondrously terrified by the news of such a
great victory and they made use of all possible means to reconcile
trickery and disloyalty many times and who well knew their love and
support was fruitless and always brought grief and damage to their
lord, rejected them and refused to make an agreement. Instead, he
assembled his host and hurriedly entered Poitou where King John
was. When the host arrived at a castle called Loudun, a rich, fortified,
and well-supplied castle, the Viscount of Thouars, who was a wise
and powerful man, and the highest nobles of the whole of Aquitaine
sent their messenger to the King begging him to receive them in
forgiveness and in love, or to give them a truce. And the King, who
was accustomed to always prefer to vanquish his enemies through
peace rather than through battle, received the Viscount of Thouars in
peace upon the request of the Count Perron of Brittany, cousin to the
King, who was married to the viscount's niece.
King John of England, who was then in the countryside fifteen
miles away from the castle where the King was, did not know what he
could do or what would become of him as there was no retreat to
which he could safely flee and he did not dare wait for him nor set out
to engage him in battle. In the end he sent his messengers to the King
to negotiate some sort of peace or at least a truce if at all possible. The
messengers he sent were Master Robert, legate of the Roman court,
Count Renoul of Chester, and many other men. The legate and the
other messengers spoke so intently that the King, out of the kindness
of his heart, granted them a five-year truce, this even though he had in
his host 1,000 knights and a large number of his other followers and
of his sergeants, both on foot and mounted, with which he could
easily and quickly have taken the whole of Aquitaine along with the
King of England and all his troops.
These things accomplished, the King returned to France. There,
 54 THE EVENT

Ferrand's wife and the Flemings came to negotiate with him on the
sixteenth calend of November. Then the King granted them back
Ferrand, this against the opinion and wishes of his people, on
condition that they would give him Godfrey, the Duke of Brabant's
son, as hostage for five years and that they would destroy at their own
expense all the castles and forts of Flanders and Hainaut, and would
pay ransom for Ferrand and each of the other prisoners according to
the quantity of their misdeeds. In this way, Ferrand and all the others
I were freed from prison. As to Count Harvey of Nevers and the others

i who were the King's liege men, the King never took any vengeance on
them other than to make them swear on the saints that they would
from then on be good and loyal toward him and the French crown.
On the sixteenth ealend of the following March, there was a total
eclipse of the moon which began at first cock crow and lasted till after
the beginning of the following day."
Commentary
At the time that King Philip was fighting in Flanders against Otto and
his other enemies, as we have said, Messire Louis, his son.. was in
Anjou fighting against King John and the Poitevins. He forced King
John to lift the siege of the castle of La Roche-aux-Moines before
even getting there and made him and the whole of his host flee
shamefully. And because father and son had these two victories at the
same time, thanks to the help of Our Lord, the King founded near the
town of Senlis an abbey by the name of Victory, of the order of Saint-
Victor of Paris, in memory and remembrance of these great victories
the Lord had granted them.

4 This is the end of William the Breton's text as contained in manuscript

5925 in the Bibliotbeque Nationale. The continuation of the events of Philip
Augustus's reign was added by a monk of Saint-Denis.
''I'
.1
 Peace

William the Breton's narrative is not the sole immediate account.

There are other contemporary or just subsequent accounts which are
independent of his; they complete it and suggest the correction of
some of his points. These accounts are less elaborate and are different
in that they do not reflect the viewpoint of the French court and thus
show the battle in a different light. In order to correctly interpret the
official trace of the event, we need to look at these very direct
accounts.
Four texts have survived, of which three were written in Latin. The
most reliable one is the Relatio Marchianensis de Pugna Bouinis
written, as its title indicates, in the neighboring monastery of
Marchiennes and probably within the first reverberation of the event.
It was published by Waitz in his Manumenta Germaniae Historica on
the basis of a manuscript in the Douai library. The lines ending the
first. continuation to the chronicle of Flanders entitled Flandria
generosa, dating from 1165 to 1214, also provide an almost direct
account of the affair. It seems that the fame of Bouvines itself had led
the author of this continuation to start work, the battle having
revived everywhere the desire to write history. He too was probably a
monk, a Cistercian from the Clairmarais Abbey near Saint-Omer; at
any rate he was leaning toward the French side. We know from
Aubry des Trois Fontaines that an archdeacon from Liege likewise
was so moved by the Capetian victory that he proceeded to write
about those unusual events of his time with which he was familiar.
This deacon is possibly the author of a life of Saint Odile who died in
1219. Only the last part of this work was preserved, thanks to Gilles
from Orval Abbey in the diocese of Treves who around 1250
incorporated it into his history of the bishops of Liege. This part
celebrates the 1213 triumph at Steppes near Montenaaken of Saint
 58 COMMENTARY
Lambert who gave his proteges, the Liegeois, the victory over the Duke
of Brabant and it also gives an account of Bouvines in the
development of the success. The fourth account is couc~ed in the
vernacular. It is a chronicle of the years 1185 to 1217 wntten after
1220 for Robert of Bethune by someone in his immediate entourage
who possibly was not a clerk. This domestic writer, of the sort that
could already be found in the entourage of even very petty lor~s, had
already written a History of the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of
England where he wrote a good deal about John Lackland whom his
f
"
master had served. He then undertook this other work, more open to
the affairs of France and giving an important place to the Battle of
Bouvines.
The contribution of these four narratives makes a better reading of
William the Breton possible. However, in order to be accurate, this
reading needs to be inserted into its appropriate locus. within the
institutions, the social conventions, the system of mental Images, and
the rules which, in this part of the world at the threshold of the
thirteenth century, constituted the framework of military action. This
framework's foundations had been established more than two
centuries previously. Thus, those wishing to gain a good understanding
of what happened on the field of Bouvines on July 27, 1214, need to
direct their gaze toward this far-off past.
At all times in the course of millennia fading away into the night of
prehistory, war, that is ioerra- the Germanic and Latinized name the
writings of learned men gave it at the time of Bouvines - had be.en a
good thing. It was the rormal -occupation of men fit to wage It. It
sprang up anew each year with th~ return of ~ood weather, and the
gods blessed it. It filled' a primordial economic function, at least ~s
important as that of productive labor: it was necessary to fight m
order to protect the resources of the community, large or small, of the
tribe, the clan, the familial group. To fight also meant to add to o~e's
resources, as in gathering or hunting, by taking elsewhere everyt~mg
I
l:
that could be carted away, clothing, food, livestock, boys, and girls.
Thus, peace was always only a chance interru~ti~n imposed by
circumstances, the exhaustion of manpower, the thmmng out of prey,
poor weather - a temporary respite, an interlude in the course of
which the transfer of wealth usually caused by war took another
path, the form of the gift and the counter-gift, of matrimonial
exchange, of trade. . first comes from the spirit, the second from the flesh and blood. Those
Yet as the year 1000 aBProached, war suddenly came to be seen III
the Christian world as e~il. This was a staggering mutation! In the
thinking of the high clergy, a different concept of peace formed and
PEACE 59
took its place at the heart of a global image of the cosmos of human
society, ~nd of salvation. It was also part of a concerted attempt led
by the bishops and the abbots of the greatest monasteries to restore
the world, to bring the structures of the visible universe back into the
ideal mo~d of divine i?tentio~. The millennium of Christ's passion
was neanng. A new alliance With the heavens was required. It was not
only monks, those disdainers of the world, but all men who must now
do penance, who must purify themselves of violence and the shedding
of human blood while renouncing money and sensual wants. The
spirit of aggression and all its adherent activities were thenceforth
condemned and categorized as sin. Peace was good, right, normal,
peace was the order of things, peace was God Himself. We have
difficulty in measuring the extent of the upheaval caused by this
outlook: a whol~ ~ystem of values was radically and definitely
overturned. (And It IS not by- chance that this mutation occurs at the
speci~c moment when ,the growth of mercantile relations is beginning
defimtely to take off m Europe. Plundering is replaced by trade, a
trade based upon the peace of the markets and the fairs on the
circulation of .silver coins, each stamped with the cross, that very
sa~e cross which mar,ked at the crossroads the entry into safe areas,
whlc~ on a crusader ~ outer garment meant that his person was
especially protected agamst harm. But a contradiction thus introduced
itself
. into the .ideology
. of the Church. The latter had , at the same
time, to restral~ .ltS own taste for plunder, for giving freely, the sense
of largess, of dlsmterestedness, all those virtues so tightly interlinked
~ith aggres~ivi~ in the warrior ethic. The Church gradually found
Itself more mclmed to tolerate the sin of lucre, to absolve it. This is
the point of departure ?f the !ong movement which finally led the
clergy to make peace With busmessmen and to sanctify profit.)
And yet, the evidence was unavoidably staring one in the face:
God's rule on this earth is not wholly His own. His order here is
disturbed -:- as it.is sometimes in the sky by the passage of one of those
met~ors ~~sturbmg the ,regular course of the stars. In this epoch, a
dualist VISIOn of the umverse dominates all thoughts. In creation in
man's complexity, two natures are mingled: the spiritual and the
cor~~real., The spirit and the flesh. The latter, clammy, nocturnal,
reptilian, I~ the wet-1?'urse of vice - first among which is pride, the
refusal of light. And m flesh is also rooted the desire to take and to
brutalize. Such then, is the opposition between peace and war: the
wishing to attain the Kingdom must thus strive to limit the use of
arms, as much damned as money and sex. But in order to achieve this
they must themselves fight, and it is here that another deepe;
,
" 60 COMMENTARY
~ contradiction appears. God is not only the Lamb. One must picture
Him as well as leader of armies - which numerous passages in the
Scriptures indicate - as a terrifying sword-brandishing king, and this
I image imposes itself the more easily as it accords with pre-Christian
morality, an ethic specific to the then dominant social stratum, that of
the war leaders, whence all Church leaders issue. Thus, at that time,
the military outlook penetrates the whole of Christianity's symbolism
(timaginaire) very deeply; it shows the Eternal as the lightning-
throwing God, and it puts a sword between Christ's teeth in the pages
of the Apocalypse. In fact, God wages daily battle against adversary
forces which resist His decrees. He leads, attacks, besieges fortresses,
stamps on His crushed enemies. The good Christian must join His
battle corps, must march under His banner; he is rquired to fight
alongside Him, to help Him defend the weak, to avenge wrongs, to
repel heretics and infidels. Tuitio, ultio, dilatatio, defend, avenge,
spread the domain of true faith - these are the three aspects of action
which are also those of the good Lord's. This has to be a military
action: because the world is imperfect, peace cannot be established
without war.
Pursued in this direction, war becomes just, and fighting is not a sin
any more. The Church Fathers clearly stated this. For instance, Isidor
of Seville: "War is just when it is waged to recuperate one's property
and to repel aggressors with the sanction of an edict." This, because
God has chosen his lieutenants on earth. They are the kings who are
impregnated with God's power through their coronation. Of course,
any man can legitimately (as the text of Decree XXIII clearly states)
fight in self-defense, avenge himself, and Providence will surely
support his right. However, it is up to the "peace-making" king to
maintain order in the exercise of private vengeance, to offer his
arbitration before the adversaries came to blows, to preside over
conciliatory assemblies, to execute their sentences sword in hand and,
if asked, to come to the help of victims too weak to avenge
themselves. To succor all those oppressed by evil forces, such is
the king's primary mission, the one the formulas of blessing in the
course of the coronation ceremony assign to his sword, to his banner,
while invoking the God of armies. The expeditions he leads to this
end are sanctified, incensed, blessed. In 1066 when William, Duke of
Normandy, wearing a rosary of relics around his neck, set off on a
campaign against the king of the English, the Pope himself "ordered
him to bravely take up his weapons against the perjurer and he sent
him the banner of Saint Peter whose virtue would protect him from
all harm." Because it is presented as retaliation for the "breaking of
the peace," for the infraction of the universal order all Christians
PEACE 61
must strive to defend, the military action of the people's legitimate
leaders is literally a consecrated one. It is a work of peace and, since
peace is Christ, it is a work of faith. The historian Raoul Glaber very
clearly describes this indissoluble alliance in the middle of the
eleventh century as "a reform of the peace and of the institutions of
the holy faith." As a matter of faith, peace is consequently a matter of
the C.hurch. However, for the order of the world to be respected, the
function of the Church is limited to support with prayer the
institutions to which divine will has entrusted all peace-making
enterprises: the monarchy.
But it so happens that some kings, the kind of king which the
masters of the great regional principalities have turned themselves
into since the end of the tenth century, prove to be inept at fulfilling
their mission. The dikes then break and allow turbulence to invade.
!he ~relates' ,became aware of this failure and of the consequent
Irr~ptlOn of dI~order, of bad war, and of the allied trouble of heresy.
!hIS occurre~ In the south of Gaul as the year 1000 was approaching,
In tho~e provInces most remote from the palaces where the sovereigns
were living. They then felt obligated to take the matter of peace unto
their own hands, to appropriate what should have been a royal
.. mission. To this end, and with the help of local princes, they called a
series of councils. This was the beginning of the movement toward
.'
the "peace of God." Within the assemblies which started this
n:ovement, the global representation of human society which I
discussed earlier and w.hich divided men into three orders, each
charged with one of three functions, was gradually formed.
The separate classification of men of prayer, men of war, and men
of labor translated the reality of social relations. At the close of a
secul.ar evolution which had affected fighting technique, political
relations and man-to-man relations simultaneously, peasant laborers
found themselves submitted within the framework of seigniories to
exploitati~n by their masters. At the same time the military sphere
had effectively become the monopoly of a small number of knights,
the only ones in possession of efficient weapons. At the very moment
when homage and fealty have led to the solidification of the practice
of combat service owed to the prince of the region by those war
sp~cialists which the vernacular dialect of the time called "knights,"
this concept of the social order aimed at protecting all unarmed and
thus vulnerable Christians (that is, the monks, the clergy, and the
mass of the poor) through a particular peace, a peace which was no
longer that of the king, who had proved to be deficient, but was
rather the peace of God. In exchange, this stance reserved the practice
of war to a few rich men. Thus the new ideology drew a line between
 62 COMMENTARY
the domain of arms and thus of evil, and the rest. It carefully drew
social boundaries, attempting to use them to block the outpouring of
violence with a wall of interdictions, and called upon those who
dared breach these taboos the vengeance of Almighty God. Through
this, chivalry found itself separated, contained, but also, as it ~ere,
isolated, thrown outside the law, abandoned to the leaven of evil,
However the Church realized that it was its duty not to abandon
to satanic forces all these men, violent, plundering, and of course
I dangerous, yet baptized. Wishing to help save their souls, it atte~pted
~
to domesticate them. These weapons, which only they had the nght to
bear and which were the emblem of their prominence, began to be
I blessed by priests who consecrated them with the same formulas as
I used for the royal sword. The intent was to convince the members of
the warrior order only to wage war, as kings were committed to do,
(
. for the defense of the weak, the vengeance of unpunished crimes, and
the expansion of Christendom. The Church thus intended to turn all
those whom birth, the virtue of blood and wealth put amongst
knights into sorts of kings, or at least into help~rs of t?~ new peace,
the "peace of God," it was preaching. In 1095, It mobilized them all
to go and deliver Christ's tomb, setting loose their vi,ol~nce but on t?e
condition that it would spend itself outside the Christian community
in the distant and salutary adventure of the Crusade. Long before
that, starting in the second decade of the /eleventh ,centu~y, a great
impulse for collective penance on the eve of the mIllenmum, of the
Passion had initiated the custom of imposing particular abstinences
on knights, similar and additional to the restrictions pertaining to
food and sex. In applying the concept of just war, the Church w~s
differentiating the various actions .of the man of arms to~ard his
fellow warriors into lawful and unlawful, the pure and the Impure,
the white and the black. In every diocese, knights were summoned to
assemblies where they swore to respect similar rules, for instance t?
refrain from attacking a man of arms who, in order to atone for h~s
sins sheds his military equipment during Lent and, through this
gesture, places himself amongst the poor, that is, under the protection
of the peace of God. It is thus that the principle that no one should
attack his enemy between the last hour of Saturday and the first hour
of Monday was first formulated. Sunday's peace ~as soon exten~ed
to Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in commemoration of,the passion
of Christ: this is what was called "the truce of God." Bishops were
the judges of infractions of these pacts; they-pronounced anatheO?'as
and excommunications on those who breached the peace, removing
them from the Christian community, calling the wrath of heaven
upon them, dooming them, unless they made amends, to rejoin the
PEACE 63
worst demons in hell. As a.matter of faith, the new ethic was naturally
the purview of episcopal jurisdiction.
It seems to have very soon become the purview of the Pope. As it
reformed in the course of the eleventh century, the Church gradually
consolidated itself under the authority of the Bishop of Rome. The
latter thus took on the role of 'Supreme ruler of the peace. In 1059, a
Roman synod extended the treuga Domini to the whole of
Christendom. At Clermont, in .1095, at the center of a whole system
of penitential prescriptions aimed at reinforcing norms of abstinence,
the rules of the truce were solemnly proclaimed by Pope Urban II in
the very speech initiating holy war, thus establishing a complementarity
between the Crusades and the peace of God. At the Council of Reims
in 1119, Callixtus II formulated a doctrine of peace which, because it
was that of the Pope, had to be obeyed by the whole Church. This
declaration, as reconstituted by the chronicler Orderic Vital, is as
follows: Christ came on earth for peace; "let us consequently put all
our efforts into bringing peace and salvation to its members (that is,
the Christian people redeemed by blood), since we are the ministers
and the bestowers of God's order"; "the seditiousness of men of arms
provokes troubles and divisions amongst the people, ... prevents the
contemplation of spiritual matters, ... empties the churches, ... disturbs
the clergy, ... destroys regular discipline, ... deplorably exposes
modesty and chastity to the violence of evil"; peace is a "general right
for every reasonable creature, for every being in whom the part of
spirit is of some importance; it reigns without contest in the celestial
universe, in the uncorrupted part of creation"; it indissolubly unites
the inhabitants of the heavens who live in joy while mortals
constantly fail to unite through a similar bond." So as to render the
visible world less different from the invisible one, the Pope 'then
prescribes the strict observance of the truce of God. He threatens with
anathema all those who would reject the invitation "to put a stop, in
accordance with divine law, to the tumult of wars and to rejoice in the
security of rest along with the people submitted to them."
In the name of this morality and placing themselves above all the
princes of the earth, the popes thenceforth will claim toe right, ratione
peccati, to rectify any political decision which might make war veer
toward its unjust side. If need be they will impose spiritual sanctions
on the people's leaders. All through the twelfth century, at the
Lateran palace in 1123, at Clermont and at Reims in 1130 and 1131,
again at the Lateran Council in 1139, at Reims in 1148, at Tours in
1163, a third time at the Lateran in 1179, assemblies called by
pontifical authority have revised, broadened, and made explicit the
rules of peace. In 1212 again, in the week following Pentecost,
q
1
'1
64 COMMENTARY
Innocent III organizes processions for peace and for the ~~usade. To
re-establish internal concord, to project externally the military effort
of all of Christ's knights, such is the mission of the Holy See's l~gates.
Since the coronation of Philip Augustus, these can be seen, puttmg on
more and more pressure, performing a sort of uninterrupted ballet
between the belligerent powers, coming and going from one ca~p to
another, exhorting, bargaining, threatening. ~t t~e time of Bouvines,
the Roman Church, monarchistic and totalitarian, the Church of
Innocent Ill, aims more than ever to make the matter of peace and
faith its own.
And yet the movement of growth which has animated the West for
the pre:lOus 200 years has put co~cr.ete ~bst;i~es in the path of the
ideology of ecclesiastical peace. ThIs IS primarily due to the fact. t~at
this growth has led to the progressive ~!.reng,thening of l~l
~s. The peace movem~nt ~nitiated by the prelates had
developed in the cracks of pnnces .power, Yet these h~d never
allowed their prerogatives to be taken away from them. The Idea t?at
r the control of war and peace belonged to them by divine delegation
was never forgotten. And as soon as they were able to do so, they
acted accordingly.
In 1214, they had n?}_~_~~~bl~,.E0a~sert ~hemse~ves.~~he.~ou~ of
~e, a south which begins falr!ycroseri'>'P1rf!"sas Ol~e .enters It
immediately after Tours, Orleans, Chalon-sur-Saone. This Immense
region where the concepts of a peace and a truce of God were born, a
region which had seen the first developments of.the reform known as
the Gregorian which the popes had traveled m person and where
their influenc~ was greater than anywhere else, which traced the
border between the sacred and the profane in its own particular way
(this explains why it had been the cra~le of courtly love and had been
so welcoming of Catharism), in the middle of the twelfth c.entur.y ~as,
according to the Abbot of Cluny-Pierre-le-V:nerable, "lV.1thout kmg.:
duke or prince." This is still the ca~e ~t t~~ time of.Bouvines. By this
-we meanThat the masters of the principalities ~ which are here larger
and less consolidated than in the north - collide with t~e ~ower. of
thousands of independent castles and all the towns bristling WIth
fortifications. As a result they have to strain for- support from ~he
network of homage and fealty, these man-to-man bonds wh~ch
historians have So far not studied much in these regions ~ut .whIch
appear to be much looser than elsewhere. Indeed, t~e~e territories are
covered with large allods, fiefs without service dlvl~ed betwee~ a
multitude of eo-lords among whom the duty to a~vlse and to gIve
assistance scatters and dissolves itself. At any rate, m the eyes of the
PEACE 65
knights of Ile-de-France who dream of taking the southern regions
over, they seem to be filled with men of bad faith, "turncoats" on
whom no one can count as they forget their oath and keep on leaving
one leader for another: William the Marshal of England, a hero of
knightly wars celebrated with an epic song written shortly after
Bouvines, one day asked Philip Augustus, with regard to the Poitevins
whose about-faces benefited Capetian efforts against the Plantagenet
king, why traitors of the sort which in France used to be burned,
broken, and dragged by four horses, were now lords and masters. The
King answered him: "It's just buying and selling (in other words it is a
mercantile, and thus loathsome, business). They are as disposable as
butt-wipes." I fact the southern knights have a different sense of
~.JlQL: r lK.b do DQt.JIU • But it is this which
softens the structure of princely powers, gives free rein to disorder,
prevents the dukes and the counts from setting themselves up as
keepers of the peace as they should. The peace which flourishes in
these provinces is not theirs. As at the beginning of the eleventh
century, it is the peace of the councils, the assemblies where the
knights from each area come to swear a collective oath. ~.b~e
of the bisho12s and o~.
In each diocese, the "justice of Christendom," the right to punish
those who, breaking their oath, indulge in pillage and violence,
'belongs solely to the prelates. For these, the prince is simply an
adjutor, whose help they need to force suspects to appear or to
execute sentences. Since the sixties of the twelfth century, since it
became risky to venture on the roads of the meridional regions, since
danger led to the emptying of fairgrounds and the drying up of trade',
as 'armed bands began to multiply and prosper, and heretic effer-
vescence to bubble up all over the place, it was the bishops, and not
the princes rightly suspected of complicity with the troublemakers,
who were charged by the pontifical councils with organizing the holy
war against the transgressors of the Church's interdictions, fighting
against God at the side of evil. Prelates distributed the same
indulgences and protection as pilgrims to the Holy.Land received to
all men who "in the ardor of faith, in righteous labor" would set out
to fight those whose arms were polluted. At the same time the prelates
excommunicated any able-bodied young man who hesitated to follow
them. In heretic and papal southern France, the bishops attempted to
gather around them for the struggle, as the Archbishop of Bourges
had already attempted in 1038, not just the knights but everybody. In
every parish, any man over fifteen thus had to pledge to give support
to the workers for peace. Folk of the third order, the laboring estate,
whom the first views of the peace of God had pictured forever
;.
66 COMMENTARY
unarmed, were also now called to wage war under the banner of the
" saints. And if they were not capable of doing so, they had to pay, to
I
1 contribute their dues to the yearly drive for the "common peace."
'. This was an episcopal peace, a peace of the diocese in which the
populace was more and more involved. And one soon could see the
cadres thus constituted fill with a ferment originating from the world
of the craftsmen and the tradesmen.
The ferment suddenly and disquietingly errupts at Le Puy in the
winter of 1188. A carpenter - a manual laborer, illiterate, ugly,
I stupid, and moreover married and a father - has seen an apparition of
the Virgin; he has received a sign from Her and the order to preach
the peace. Right away, a sect formed around his per~on. It grew
rapidly within a few months. It soon had a treasury as Its adherents
were not destitute, but rather were craftsmen, tradesmen who were
much inconvenienced by the troubles that knightly war caused. They
were folk who saved, who hoarded deniers in their homes, who could
pay the initiation fee, buy the symbols of the confraternity, and pay
their dues. They could be recognized by their clothing which was a
symbol of voluntary purification: a white h.ooded cape. T?ey were
penitents forbidding themselves dice-throwing and swearmg, th.ey
renounced all hostility amongst themselves and pledged mutual aid.
They were the disciples of charity and purity but they were armed
disciples. They committed themselves to respond to the call of the
Virgin and to set off together against the warmongers. After a lengthy
delay, the Bishop's hands were forced in the spring; he had to bless
the movement. He tried to associate princes and knights with it and
then sent it to fight the bandits: the White Capes returned one evening
to Le Puy in triumph with the severed head of a band leader. But
soon, through a rapid unavoidable deviation, the sect began to
contest the social order. Within the group, in the postures of penance
imposed upon its members, and in .their clothing - th~ ~am~ for all -
which hid differences in social stations, all worldly distinctions were
abolished: are not God's children free and equal as they were in the
first days of the world, as they will be in the glory ofParousia? Why
pay taxes to the lords? These taxes are the price of ~ protection. the
men of war are obviously no longer capable of providing. And since
the populace is now armed and can defend itself, why shoul.d it keep
on maintaining through seigniorial dues the order of knighthood
which has ceased to fulfill its function? Reminding folk that the end of
time was coming and that they should prepare themselves, the
movement of the White Capes took the offensive against unjustified
privileges - those of the men of war and of prayer. IJ?mediately, t~e
true face of the sect became apparent to the people It threatened: It
PEACE 67
was subversive and grimacing. To everyone of these lords, the
canons, the association for peace became a demonic enterprise whose
darkness the white capes poorly hid. And this time the priests called
for help against it on these other lords, the knights, who all, good or
bad, responded, forgetting all other discords and thinking of nothing
else but supporting the social edifice whose foundation was now
tottering. Without delay, the bishops organized a military expedition
against the false perverted brothers of peace, and its members, swords
in hand, set out to exterminate this pestilence rotten to the core with
heretic miasma. But in 1214 no one is certain that it will not reappear
again. In the south of France, the kingdom thus remains divided
against itself: peace could not be solely based upon the cooperation of
the prelates and the poor. To allow the latter to arm themselves,
without strong supervision by the war specialists, would soon lead to
the breakdown of the functions of the three orders which the Creator
has assigned to human society.
The help of princes is necessary for the work of peace but it is still
absent in these regions, although the north is free of these
contradictions. In 1212 the northern countryside witnessed the
formation ofbands of "children" - that is, members of the populace
living outside a family, shepherds, starving cadet sons looking for
adventure. They also brandished letters that had come from heaven;
they came to show them to Philip Augustus who consulted the
masters of the Parisian schools about them. But these hordes were
dreaming of delivering Christ's tomb rather than hunting down
bandits or, even though they occasionally did plunder tithe granaries
along the way, of abolishing the seignorial rights to maintain internal
peace. This was because a sort of order predominated in these
provinces where, for a long time and in accordance with divine
intentions, princes had taken the institutions of peace back into their
own hands.
These institutions, fashioned in the south of the kingdom, had
penetrated into northern France (this was in the third decade of the
eleventh century) as soon as it appeared that the King, even in these
areas, was no longer able to maintain peace. But they had then been
incorporated into the structures of those regional principalities whose
masters had been able to maintain their power, and first of all into
those with the most solid frameworks, Flanders and NormandyJhe
peace institutions ~E.~d in E1aoders in 1042 and 1041..at the
council of Therouanne. However, this acceptance was only partial:
there is no mention of the peace of God, of the taboos aimed at
protecting sacred places and the persons of clerks, of monks, and of
!.
68 COMMENTARY
the poor from violence. O~ ~tru~cla.ilnc.dJt.iUU2 to the
count, in as~qfiation_here with---ale bishop, to ensure that it is
respected. The prince mmiifains-his-prerogatives-:-aunng"the'daysor--
-----aDSfinence from war, he alone keeps the right to lead expeditions for
the common good and to make sure that the warriors accompanying
him do not abuse requisitions. Further, acts of fractio pacis are not
judged by the bishop but by the countal court, before which the
accused come to defend themselves through an oath in front of twelve
of their peers or through the ordeal of a red-hot iron. Thus, princely
power affirms itself as the source of all pe~_~.~rsth~ same iD
Normandy where, with the prescriptions of Therouanne as model,
< the rules of peace were adopted as soon as Duke William, future
~IitpK:m:gIits. The sovereign was connected to the lowliest of
conqueror of England, became secure in his 'ower~lin:ea::::ili
stren t en i e1iWlt - Church: the initiative
originates Wit im. Here again, only the truce, the temporary
suppression of private vengeances, was imposed: during sacred times,
all war was declared illicit barring one led by the duke in person or by
the King of France, and no power of repression could substitute for
that of the prince. At the close of the eleventh century, when the
Conqueror's heir allowed power to slip from his hands, and when
violence was set loose in Normandy's courltryside, the region's
bishops gathered at Rouen and attempted to establish a regime of
peace similar to that of the southern provinces: special protection of
the churches and of the poor, a pact, an oath sworn by all men aged
twelve and above, a collective oath, militia raised by the prelates.
However, "since the bishops were not backed by-superior justice, all
these dispositions were of not much use. Everything decided became
near useless." In fact, under the new duke, Henry Beauclerc, the peace
again became that of the prince.
~
s to the King, he delayed a long time declaring himself the
minent keeper of order. This was because he had a much looser grip
on his own principality. In the royal domain, at the very doors of the
Capetian palaces, the masters of the castles were setting themselves
up as autonomous powers. The sovereign's first task was to subdue
these rivals. This was not easy. A:3~~_b~llini!!gJli" the t~~lfth
ce~}.!~..12!:1is _YJJ.!~ilip'_,Allg!:1.S.!~~~..J~~ndj~E.her, exhausted himself,
~e.-E~k, forever on horseback followed Ey a small band of
faithfuffriends, his childhood companions, torch in hand against the
palisades of puny fortresses, engaging in petty scuffles repeated each
summer..!:!is means~~ted. People contrasted the petty wars he
led, supported solely by his own virtue and divine election, with those
that William Rufus, the King of England, was waging with the money
in his treasury (his country already overflowed with gold) which
PEACE 69
enabled him to hire mercenaries. But at the side of the Capetian stood
a mentor, a man of much broader views than himself who had an
abstract understanding of principles: the Abbot of Saint-Denis.
Haunted by Carolingian memories, by the iaea of the greatness and
unity of the kingdom, he was primarily guided by the thought of the
pseudo-Denys the Areopagite whom he mistook for the Denis in the
crypt. This idea was a theology of light propagated from point to
point from the hearth of divine love; it was a mystical conception of a
hierarchy of powers. Suger adopted this vision of the cosmos for his
own use and presented the sacrea~~f>@S~~
~iOr !o aIr _~~"p~!i~s ~L!he kiE,g?O~J. .•~.bo.}Y.~,te.themselYes
these knights by the links of a feudal chain, a string of graduated
mutual services. And while King Louis tired himself out in apparently
useless campaigns, Suger was proclaiming: "It is the duty of kings to
repress with their powerful hands and through the right stemming
from their office, the audaciousness of those tyrants who are ripping
the State apart with their endless wars, and who are finding pleasure
in plundering, in devastating the poor, in destroying churches." When
the leaders of local bands who should have shown themselves to be
the loyal helpers of the peace-making activities of God's lieutenant let
themselves be overtaken by covetousness and the spirit of thieverY;-it-
thus behooves_ili.eJin.,gl.!!! orqer-!.<Lbrill&..Pack tQDJI,gY1.into the fold
of justice, to seek direct support from the Church and the' poor"whose
protector he is by definition. This is the governing thought, the
springboard of all the impulses toward majesty welding together
around the person of the King of France at Bouvines. When he
narrates theJ.ife of Louis VI, Suger highlights a village priest who, so
as to lend support to the attack on the castle of Puiset by the knights
of the royal house, led a troop of peasants, his parishioners, against
the wicked lord. The abbot was thus putting his finger on a major
innovation: in the principality ruled by the Capetian at that time,l
communes came to be organized which were in reality associations oLl
peace. Parish militias were made up of men from the populace, each
troop similar to the one organized by the Archbishop of Bourges in
1038 and to those formed later in the southern dioceses. However,
there was one major difference: here the people from the communes
are not following the bishop, but the King. And their mobilization
had not resulted from disorder.
Because the King has received from God the responsibility of
leading his people, he can arm the poor and use them in a just war
without disturbing the order of the world: the King is sacred. Orderic
Vital describes the appearance of the communes which he, as
70 COMMENTARY
someone used to the way things were in Normandy, finds somewhat
puzzling. He states that Louis VI lacked forces "to repress the tyranny
of bandits and trouble makers"; he thus turned to the bishops who
then "founded communities of the people in France, so that the
priests with the banners and the parishioners would accompany the
king in the sieges and the battles." Amaury of Montfort might even
have encouraged Louis VI, his lord: "Let the bishops, the counts and
the other barons of your domain gather round you; let the priests
with the parishioners follow you where you order them, so that an
army made up of the common people inflicts a common vengeance on
public enemies." And the bishops "obeyed eagerly, putting anathemas
on priests of their diocese as well as on parishioners if they failed to
make haste at the prescribed time to follow the king in his
expeditions." The King of France is the king Of the Last Judgment, of
the whole assembly of humankind. He is in direct communication
with heaven; not only can he fight during the truce because he is the
arm of God but he is also allowed to recruit for his own war, which is
that of the good, men who do not have the fighting vocation so as to
align them under the sacred banner he wields. It is not by chance that,
at Bouvines, the Oriflamme is guarded by the peoples from the
communes. The banner is the legitimization of their presence, the
warranty of their efficaciousness.
In any case i .. ee ace which the <;:~~less
wea t an his ancestors, b~~~~~~ as be was able..At....
the beginning, aII1i1s campaigns were approved by councils. A papal
legate, presiding over the Council of Soissons in 1115 fulminated
against the violators, solemnly invited the King to act against one of
them, Thomas of Marles, and promised the King's companions all the
special immunities usually given to Christ's knights when they are
waging sanctified battle. While returning from the blessed expedition,
the Count of Nevers, who had helped the King, was captured by
Thibaut of Blois. Louis VI immediately called upon episcopal justice
and ended up bringing his complaint to the Pope himself at the
Council of Reims of 1119 which found him in the right. Such was the
framework, a sacred one, in which thenceforth all the military actions
of the French King were placed. From that period dates the special
attention paid to the banner of Saint Denis, and probably also the
adoption of the war cry: "Montjoie - Saint Denis" (it evokes at once
the special protection of the first Parisian martyr and pontifical
patronage since Montjoie is the last stop of the journey to Rome, the
one where the pilgrim finally sees the City). In the name of God, the
Capetian is in charge of the tuitio: in fact, it is at Reims in 1119 that
Louis VI took the Abbey of Cluny itself, which had been so closely
PEACE 71
conn.ected with Rome, under "his defense, protection and tutelage";
rallying all the major feudal lords, he marched in 1124, pro
defensione patriae, against Emperor Henry V who wanted to invade
the kingdom. He is charged with the ultio: in 1127, after having
sought the advice of a council, Louis VI led his host to Flanders to
avenge the death of Charles the Good and to destroy his sacrilegious
and parricidal assassins - "The noblest deed of the reign," wrote
Suger, a deed which left the Flemish countryside "whitened and as if
re-baptized by its punishments and by the abundant spilling of
blood." The historian Arieh Crabois speculates, on the basis of a
letter of the Bishop Ives of Chartres, that, prior to 1114 the same
in g LOUiS. had attempted to establish rules for peace for the whole of
the kingdom of France - possibly following the example of the Count
G
Robert of Flanders who had ratified the peace of Therouanne in
111.1. ~~_E:.~nt attempting _to carry throug!l the idea thaz.rhe
1
J~~~.e~~~atmg from th~!"...!.2..!.hat oi.!ill; princ~,
~ecause It promaeoairect:!2'..i£9m cEvine del~on. At any rate it
was iilfnoseyea.fs that "the concept of the "crown" began to take
shape; this was an abstract notion involving a collection of
indefeasible rights inherent in the person of 'the sovereign and
attached to a symbolic object, an emblem transmitted from father to
son and which was entrusted into the care of the monks of Saint-
Denis. Among these prerogatives is that of exercising supreme rule
over all the castles, each of which symbolizes public' peace: in the
charter, through which he promised to protect the Monastery of
Cluny, located very far from his domain but still within the confines
of his kingdom, Louis VI had pledged to keep "in the hands of the
crown of France the fortresses, castles and fortified walls...so as to
publicly provide for the needs and the defense of the crown of
France."
&
The kings' tireless drive to take back into their hands the leadership
~ over peace and war took a decisive turn toward the middle of the
twelft? century, .a?out sixty years b~fore Bou~ines and shortly before
the birth of Philip Augustus, g.urmg the reign of Louis VII. The
sovereign himself cannot be credited with this upturn, even though
Eleanor of Aquitaine's hapless husband is certainly undeserving of the
scorn traditionally heaped on him by France's historians. Rather, this
change took place during those extremely favorable times when, in
I A. Grabois, "De la treve de Dieu a la paix du roi. Etude sur les
transformations du mouvement de la paix au XW siecle." In Melanges
offerts it Rene Crozet, eds P. Gallais and Y.-J. Riou (Societe d'Etudes
medievales, Poitiers, 1966).
72 COMMENTARY
the laying of the foundations of the great cathedrals~ in the cult~ral
influence of the Paris schools, in the growth of all kmds of trading,
and in the expansion of the vineyards of Ile-de-France. we perc~ive
the flowering of the prosperity of the royal ~ The Capetian,
nr.rster of the toll, recipient ortIle" appropriation of large portions of
harvests, benefited more than anyone else. This enabled him to
impose his will much farther afield. First of all, he was now able to
punish the felony of the greatest feudal lords, such as that of a Count
of Champagne or a Count of Anjou, outside his own seigniory where
the masters of the castles had gradually been tamed and were now
serving the King as office-holders of the palace. He now could also
completely fulfill his liturgical function, to undertake a very ~e~ote
pilgrimage as his ancestor, Robert the Pious, had done, but this time
in an entirely different spirit. It was not to prepare personally for an
approaching death, as an ultimate penance of purification, but rather,
as Joinville was to say later about Saint Louis, "putting his body into
adventure" for the salvation of the whole of his people. Just as he
should. It is.to this end that crossin the border o~&.
Christ's 'gnm...L~_Y1Lri.§i.te.d-..La:::::chai'trense;-5aiat-J.a~s. ...o.L
S2~l?_~t~rra,-an_d then went~~]wls~ These very long
journeysnaa1fieb'eneflt or showmg the monarch s person to lords
whose fathers had never, within living memory, seen or touched a
King of France, nor conversed, eaten, or drunk with him. And,. most
importantly, the pilgrimage gave the royal escort, for the duration of
its peregrinations, all the privileges that, the Roma~ ,Church
guaranteed to those undertaking the holy, Jou~ney. ThIS IS how,
during the two years of the crusade, the entire kingdom was placed
under the protection of the Church, that is, in the peace of God. And
if was probably for this reason that, upon h~.!h..1QJ;1,i~ .Yl.!jelt
that he could asseml5tnt 50issans, 10 June 1151" the Archbishops or
Reims and of Sens along WIth their suffragans"the Duke of Burgundy,
the Counts of Champagne and of Flanders, that is, all who were
important in this part of the French kingdom and who were later to
be present at Bouvines. There, "at the request of the prela~es, under
the advice of the barons, ...to suppress the ardor of the WIcked and
to contain the violence of the plunderers," he instituted peace for th~
whole kingdom - a ten-year peace, promisinga;mplete security to the
d1urches, the peasants, and the merchants, and as well to any man
"regardless of whom he might be, if he were ready to appear in front
of the one who was supposed to render him justice." The peace was
founded on a collective pledge, but the so_vereign set h~s the
-PIe-eminen! defender of this oath: "In plenary ~ouncil and in, fr~nt of
all, we have said with the royal voice that we WIll keep peace inviolate
~ PEACE 73
and that we will render justice with our might to any violator of this
I ordinance." The innovation lies in this very point. The envelope has
1 not chan?ed; it is indeed that of the peace of God. But the King takes
up, for hIS own benefit, the whole system of pacific institutions so as
to integrate it into the ordo of the kingdom.
'-:Fromtnattime on, ii1iiOr1:1iern"'France:' mtne'rraIiCe<5lrrouvines :'J
the military ga~e,took on a new appearance~carry;aiStmbcmee
was ar rom pacffieITach fortress contained a small restless cavalry,
alWays on the look out, ready for .vengeance or plunder. But its
leader, who had less and less access to large profits, could only
provide them at most with lean nags and rusty weapons. Should the
King appear with an army clanking. with the most modern arrnor, all
would bend in front of Capetian majesty, a majesty blessed by the
magnates of the Church. This occurred in the south of Burgundy
~hen Louis VII on two occasions, in 1166 and 1171, and then Philip
m 1180, the year of his coronation, led the royal host there in the
name of God. With what aim? To defend and avenge the poor. They
have come, state the preambles of the diplornata, because "the land of
B~rgundy. has for a long time, due to the absence of the kings, been
WIthout discipline and the restraint of just guidance; those who in this
country have some power and can attack each other, oppress the
weak and devastate the properties of the Church. Because of so much
wickedness and led by the zeal of God, we havethus entered into
Burgundy with the army so as to conduct the vengeances and to
reform the peace and the country." There was no trace of resistance
but there were words, and many of them: all have come to state their
grievances to the king and his barons. Justice is then rendered, not by
the sword, but by the plaid? And the clerks glorify the lieutenant of
divine power, whose arrival is sufficient to rekindle in every region a
fer~ent of growth: in 'the small church of Avenas, in the Macon
region, the altar sculptures show Louis VII, after the expedition,
holding in his protective hand the sanctuary itself of which he is a
kind of new founder, and on the other side show the One of whom
the King is the visible representative, Christ enthroned in glory
surrounded by the apostles at the core of the' cosmic order.
Thenceforth, the old ideology of peace, the whole of the system of
institutions supporting it, are but weapons in the hands of kings who
make use of them with perfectly clear consciences to further what we
are, by then, justified in labeling their policy.
2 Translator's note: a plaid 'was a judicial meeting where leaders backed
by their followers each had their say and their disputes were resolved through
arbitration.
74 COMMENTARY
This policy becomes broader and broader: the Burgundy troubles
put down by the Capetian already appear to be the effervescence,
localized on the border of the kingdom, of a much larger conflict, the
one in which Frederick Barbarossa opposed the Pope. Two aSSOciated]
dates, that of the Third Lateran Council and that of the coronation of
Philip Augustus, open the period when the horizon cleared and one
could see the great game unfold, the game played by the kings - of
Germany, England, and France - a close match in which the Pope was
but one player amongst many" and which prepared the way for
Bouvines. Present more than ever before, the agents of pontifical
peace, the legates, also played their part. But they were often rebuffed
and had to leave empty-handed, as did Cardinal Peter in the winter of
1198-9 when he tried to bring about peace between Richard
Lionheart and King Philip. The Chanson de Guillaume le Marechal
shows the affair from the English side:
The King of France was clever,
More cunning than a fox
He soon called one of his masters'
And in short gave him
The relic which in Rome
Is needed to get things done.
Because palms must be greased
Always at the court of Rome.
The relics of Saint Rufin"
Are as much prized there
As those of Saint Albin,
They are the good martyrs of Rome.
Without them law and its makers
Would not be worth an apple.
Won over, the Pope sends his cardinal to harangue King Richard:
What great sin and evil
Is this great war between you.
For it, lost the Holy Land shall be.
Should a long truce be established
Between you there would be generosity
So that no loss would occur
And each would keep what he holds.
PEACE 75
Richard of England sees red: the Pope had taken no action to hasten
his freedom when, while returning from the Crusade, he was captured
in the Empire, and now he dares to come and wimper about peace to
him, just because King Philip is in a difficult position. The Legate
Peter is expelled. And he is lucky: it is not because he is a cardinal of
the Roman Church that he is allowed to leave with his genitals intact,
but rather because he is a "messenger" and, as such, protected by the
rules of honor of the profane ethic of war. The evidence is clear;
Rome is looked upon as what it has become - a political power. It is
made use of when the need arises, when it can be of decisive help in an
intrigue. Otherwise, no one hesitates to counter it and it is denied any
right to meddle in kingly business. Shortly afterwards, when Pope
Innocent III reproached him, ratione peccati, for having disinherited
John Lackland, Philip of France replied by invoking feudal law which
fully justified his intervention and was in no way a concern of the
Church.
Yet we must not think that during the years preceding Bouvines the
strengthening of sovereignty has in any way made the ~um
ads, the affaIr of. eace, less sac d. In truth, in the northwest of
France, 10 t e face of t e claims of this other sovereign, the Bishop of
Rome, the kings, these holy personages who are surrounded and
supported by the bishops, their fellows in sacredness, proclaim loudly
that peace pertains to their own specific function, that conferred upon
them by the power of God. They make claim to the full conduct of
military action whose final stake as well as final justification is now a
crown. Such a claim, such a pattern of behavior, is the issue of a
century-long evolution. Its most audible beat corresponds to that of
another history, one unfolding in the everyday sphere, downward
from theories and principles, at the level of production and
exchanges, whose theatre is the man-made clearings and the fields of
trade fairs. ~ deep and determining story - that of money.

J A clerk trained at the schools.

4 This is a common pun of the period: Ruffin is red gold; Albin is white
silver.
 T WAR
War
By the year 1214, a long time had elapsed since money had permeated
all the mechanisms of war. In the very year of Philip Augustus's
coronation, the year of the Third Lateran Council, Richard Fitz Neal,
treasurer to the King of England, made it quite clear in his Dialogue
de l'echiquier that "money is a necessity, not only in time of war but
also in peace." In peace, it serves princes' charities (this is a valuable
clue to the role attributed to money at that time); "in war, it is spent
to fortify castles, for soldiers' wages and on many other occasions
depending on the nature of the persons remunerated for the defense
of the kingdom." This was the thinking of a finance man, but one
from which the advocates of truce could have drawn a strong
argument: truce immediately augmented the flow of charity and,
through this, the shower of grace dropping from heaven. Thirty years
earlier, Peter the Venerable, the first of the Abbots of Cluny who had
had to struggle with insurmountable budgetary problems, was
thinking approximately along the same lines. He reproached his
predecessor, Pons of Melgueil, who after resigning had tried to retake
his post by force, with having squandered the treasury of the house.
In what way? By recruiting and paying mercenaries, those ruffians
who in order to restore his authority had penetrated into the
monastery and, adding insult to injury, had brought along the women
who followed them. Writing about a conflict with the lord of a nearby
castle, "I have found," notes Abbot Peter again, "that all the
neighbors, knights, castellans, the counts and even the Duke of
Normandy, were urging me to resort to arms, as if they were drawn
by the aroma of money." And it was already this smell, the one
emanating from the magnificent treasure of their count, that much
earlier yet, in 1127, all of the knights of Flanders were scenting. More
than friendship or vassalic loyalty, this lure made them rush to avenge
the murdered Count Charles.
77
What is war, anyway, if not a means, the very best means of
acquiring deniers, these objects that are still so rare in the treasure
chambers of insignificant hamlet lords, and which are nonetheless
more and more necessary? In the Anglo-Norman domain, where
coins were probably flowing in greater abundance than in any other
region of Latin Christendom, the evidence for the military use of
money dates from the last decades of the eleventh century. Here, the
regime of penances established by a council was, already in 1070,
making a distinction between vassalic knights, who were fighting free
for the service of their fief, and paid knights. Robert Courteheuse was
refusing to be his father William the Conqueror's "mercenary" any
more: "I would like," he told him, "to have something belonging to
me so as to be able to pay my followers." By the be&innjng of tlu:
tw.elilb..,g:nt~...!l:ili. rofession had become<"@11tirely normal in these
regions. So much so that Suger, as ave sal , to contrast tIie
ligUfe of the poor and pure Louis VI of France with that of the King of
England, William Rufus, "marvelous merchant and payer of
warriors." This trade was already obtaining its supplies in the Low
Countries. In 1103, Henry I Beauclerc secured from the Count of
Flanders the supply of 1,000 knights in exchange for a yearly pension
of 120,000 deniers. It is this sort of practice wbichrlhen-nr:rt<es
princely treasures of strategic import. I ~sow:ces..ate.decisix.e; as
sOOn as he was able to la'YJiands on the treasure of Henry I, Etienne of
Blois triumphed thanks to the Flemish bands he was immediately able
to recruit. But as soon as this reserve was used up, we see him, after
1139, at the mercy of his mercenaries who were demanding their pay
in vain. From that time on, money became the lifeblood of war, and
victory went to those princes who knew better than others how to
extract it from its hiding places. ~~lf of the twelfth
c~n~in all tht areau.ffe.cted by the awak.enine-oL~QllOJ:nL9f
(eXCFiange - an awakening that was very vigorously helped by the
early progress of princely fiscality - high lords started to make up for
V
he uncertainties of feudal military s~h the help of payment.
s some 0 t err vassa s were re ant to per orm eir unes, t ey
became authorized to buy back their service with a sum of money. As
early as 1127, in the country of Flanders, knights could thus free
themselves by paying 240 deniers each year. The products of these
collections were distributed amongst the vassals who answered the
call and who, in exchange for this additional reward, were supposed
to lend their lord a less fleeting and less weak hand. The defection of
some enabled princes to show themselves more generous toward
others and, consequently, to be better served. This is because initially
the pay is seen as flowing from the master's generosity, as a

78 COMMENTARY
"benefice," a gift, analogous to all those forming the most solid
T WAR
power structure in this society. What it paid for was a service of a
nature similar to that engendered by; the concession of a fief. It
insured a loyalty that was vassalic in essence. For this reason, the
ot- ~I
v
practice of paying salaries could be introduced into knightly ethics
,:-f'\,J.J \ '- easily and without tarnishing its recipient. It was normal for the lord
to be liberal. The more liberal he was, the more he was loved -
honorably. Thus salaried knights strove to be more loyal than the
others. They could be seen at the siege of Shrewsbury as the last
resisters, refusing for a long time to accept the conditions of
surrender. It was the same ethic of work well done, of pay well
earned, that was referred to by another Norman captain: the
comrades of his company should not hesitate to engage a more
numerous adversary; if they failed to act, they would not only lose the
right to their pay but also to their glory "and I surmise," he added,
"that we would thenceforth not be eating the king's bread any more."
At the threshold of the thirteenth century, money, disbursed
regularly, makes all the small corps of comrades, each grouped
around a banner, more coherent and less ready to disband. It "holds"
them as they used to say then. Most of the knights of Bouvines, who
are all heroes, have either received, or expect to receive, money for
their prese e. There is oQ.§callaalln tfut. I he scandirWiTI
e day that the deniers collected from the vassals who were
reluctant to join the host were no longer used to reward the more
I
I diligent knights but were used instead to hire warriors who were not
nobles, who had issued from the dregs of the people. The scand.al
came from the proliferation of paid foot soldiers.
:1
:1I
I
~~! their p,Eesence at the threshold of the twelfth
century, as soon as coins begIn to JIngle in tea sot e cast es a
in the pavilions set up at sieges. Orderic Vital wrote of a "famous
, , archer" who, at the time of Robert Courteheuse when Normandy
I
was stirred up by disorder, had gathered a band of brigands of "wild
boys" and had rented himself and his followers out to the lord of a
I
castle. When the archer was killed, this lord who had loved him very
! much gave charities for his soul; the peasants of the area whom he
I i had protected loved him no less: led by the village priest they went to
battle to avenge his death. Galbert of Bruges related the exploits of a
similar type of professional during the Flemish troubles of 1127; he
too was an archer who terrorized his adversaries with the precision of
his aim. These people were much feared but they were nonetheless
admired for the quality of their craft. The help that they are capable
of providing is valued. Yet because they are merchants of death,
. 1
because they have transgressed interdicts, because they have broken
79
social barriers by mixing with warriors although their own social
condition had not destined them to bear arms, because these soldiers
of fortune are of low social origin, and because, in contrast with the
men of the communes, they do not fight in the service of peace, they
are already seen as possessed by evil. They are killed immediately
upon captuse. Everyone of those mentioned in the chronicles ends up
in this manner: they are seen as seeds of corruption that must be
destroyed as soon as possible. In truth, these wicked men had
remained few irr number for a long time; they used to be seen only at
times of greatest unrest. In the middle of the twelfth century, at the
precise moment that Kinq.1ollis vu was attempting to establish peace
in the kingdom, everything changed. A new development, a terrifying
one, was the sudden irruption of these mercenaries in -dense
squadrons~ thenceforth these "undisciplined vagabonds" swarmed
'- all over the place; according to Orderic, "they hurried from distant
regions like kites, thinking of nothing but plunder." At this very date,
as we have noted, war changes character.
The term designating the laborers of the battle which appeared first
(in 1127 in Flanders in the account of Gal rt of Bruges) and which
remains the most commonly used is cottereau Possibly they were so
named because they were likened to cottiers, who were very poor
tenants, marginal laborers in large domains, but more probably it was
because t eir wea on was not the noble sword but the knife
J5;outef!!:!). Later on, we a 0 routters," of "ribau s," of
"paillards," But the one trait this vocabulary attempts to highlight is
that they are forei ners people whose language is not understood.
Often, these a venturers will be referred to as Brabancons - as in the
accounts of the Battle of Bouvines - but also as Aragonese, Navarese,
Basques, Welsh. Two types of country thus appear to periodically
disgorge this breed. First of all, the wild frontiers, the rough and poor
mountains, regions of shepherds, hunters, head hunters; they emerge
in seasonal migrations akin to those of the laborers coming down to
the plains to help with haymaking, harvesting, and. the grape harvest.
hey are also seen as coming out of Brabant - by this is meant the
whole of the Low Countries - the very region which had provided the
+-.LLU.A.!i<>l-"'o-r-J-["C""",r.ma.n~ the Kings of England with their first
mercenaries, a region where younger Brothers gladly left-4.e-smaH--
- eigmones to seek their fortune. But mainly, it was a country - and I
think this is the most important point - o~ulous..towns with largf-
suburbs of ill repute filled with recentl u rooted starving peasants
rea y, In or er to survive, to accept any job offer an even to 1 I.
These were violent towns where the youth of the communes would go
 80 COMMENTARY
and practise archery in the forest, where merchant caravans were
escorted by men quick to draw their knives. In fact, mercenaries do
not seem to be recruited from the nobility no matter how
impoverished it might be: the sons of poor knights might be looking
for pay, but they want to wage battle honorably. Cottereaux are hired
from the populace, from the laborers in the butchery trade, and even
from pe~ty unfrocked clerics like this William who successively sold
the services of the company he led to Frederick Barbarossa and then
to Richard Lionheart.
Jt is the greatest princes the richest ones th e who di into large
--.!£easure~ who attract them. This pestilence spread as an evil c ou
over the provinces of France; the texts show it was first used in 1159
by King Henry II of England, and then in 1162 by the Count of
Champagne. The Archbishop of Reims pronounced an anathema
again~t t?e la~ter. b~cause the routiers in his pay had ravaged
ecclesiastical seigmones, massacred and burned thirty-six villagers in
a chu~ch. Two yea.rs later, the King of France and the Emperor, these
two pillars of Christendom, met at the borders of their States in one
~f those fraternal encounters whose tradition went back to Carolingian
times. They swore that they would no longer keep in their lands
between the Rhine, the Alps, and Paris, "a single Brabancon 0;
cottereau, on foot or on horseback; ... if someone should make use
o~ these brigands, his archbishop or bishop will have to excommunicate
him and to place the interdict on his land until such time as he
indemnifies, after the damages have been. assessed, those who would
have been despoiled by these routiers." These fine words did not
prevent.the Co.unt of Chalon in 1165, that is, almost immediately
af~er this m~etIng, when he took up arms against Cluny (and the
eVId~nce. points to the Emperor as accomplice and as probably
shanng In the cost) from gathering "following the way of the devil
who dared tempt our Lord ... a multitude [there were 400 of them]
of brigands, commonly known as Brabancons, men who do not love
God". These bands were already strong and, ten or fifteen years later,
w see them havin more consistency, autonomy,Vlrulence. they
have slowly move towar e nort west, towar antagenet
~ountry: ~ichard pays them when he wishes to strengthen his power
In Aquitaine. By then, their leaders had become known, these
:'prince~ of robbers," whose names the chroniclers began to mention
In ~he eighth d~cade of the twelfth century. These captains, despite
their obscure birth, are known to hobnob with princes and to make
fortunes. Their masters occasionally marry them off and establish
them in a seigniory that they helped conquer. As they grow old, they
become wealthy enough to build churches, to found collegiates,
WAR 81
because they are pious when the time comes! For the great lord
dealing with them, the major problem is how to pay their wages, as
the tool which proves itself to be efficacious is very expensive. Even
the more so as the routiers find themselves in a strong bargaining
position: they negotiate with princes in conflict with each other and
whose rivalry forces them to outbid each other. In addition, these
employees are threatening ones: they could very well help themselves.
In 1183, in order to satisfy those he employs, Henry the Young,
Richard's brother, is at the end of his tether: he plunders the Abbey of
Grandmont, forces the bourgeois of Limoges to lend him 200,000
deniers. All this is not enough: he still needs to plunder as much
money again from the treasury of the Monastery of Saint-Martial.
The economic role of these companies of cottereaux is evident: they
are the marvelous agents of the opening up of hoarded treasure which
at that time feeds monetary flows, swells them, and thus maintains
the constant growth of trade. So much money is needed to keep them
that a campaign is barely over before their employer is in a hurry to
let them go. But this is not sufficient to persuade them to disband.
While awaiting a new job, they live off the land, and very freely so. In
1200, one of those bands was selling the peace to the clerks of the
diocese of Bordeaux: each one, a knife at his throat, was forced to pay
a pension of 120 deniers; the archbishop had agreed to this and was
perhaps receiving a cut. A scourge "which the Enemy has thrown on
the world to be the instrument of his iniquity," these bands continue
to survive, encrust themselves as parasitical groupings. They are
small, each at most a few hundred individuals, but singularly
destructive.
The bands move about ponderously in caravans; taking the best
roaos because t~accompameabY wagoIiS1;den with women
and children. At Dun-le-Roi, in the Berry region, where several of
these routes had gathered, and where the brothers of peace
surrounded them and, according to the sources, massacred between
7,000 and 10,000 cottereaux, the corpses of "five to nine hundred
whores whose adornments were worth a fortune" were found on the
field of carnage. Thus everything covers the mercenaries with
disgrace: the sexual dissoluteness in which they-live as much as the
piles of money they make. And then, there is the ignominious manner
in which they wage war. Fightin~t, as befits commoners, they
~SbOW to hit their adversar fro r, slyly,
shamefully, without the test 0 an -to- and confrontation. Manip-
ulating the knife, this dagger, the damned weapon which the White
Capes of Le Puy forbade themselves from carrying, they kill knights
on the sly, with low blows, through the interstices of their carapaces.
 82 COMMENTARY
And what is cause for yet more scandal is that, despite all this, writes
the Genealogic des comtes de Flandres, "they are not inferior to the
nobles in the science and the virtue [yes: in "virtue" even] of
combat." Indeed, they alone know all the stratagems needed to
penetrate into castles and locked towns. Tightly united, elbow to
elbow - they are vulnerable only when they are disbanded or in the
course of their slow travel - they build something akin to a living
fortress in the heart of the battle, an unshakable wall, bristling with
pikes, a safe shelter where the lords who pay them come to catch their
breath and from which emanate the horse-killing projectiles that
dislocate enemy charges. The presence of these fiends thus introduces
disorder at the ver he~g1iteous war. hdisturbs i.!§
-fegular. reliab e course; all t e rules are t warred because no defense,
no armor nor wall, can resist them and they are capable of engaging
the chivalry in its safest retreats. In truth they are a pestilence upon
Christendom; they corrupt it just as the heretics do. Consequently,
the Third Lateran Council, in 1179, preaches holy war against both
in a single decree. "Because in Gascony, in Albiga, in the region of
Toulouse and in other areas, the damned .perversity of the heretics
who some call Cathars, others call Patarins, others Publicans, is
growing to such an extent that they not only practise their misdeeds
in secret but publicly exhibit their error and attract to it the simple
and the weak, we have decided to lay the anathema upon them, upon
those who defend them and on those who give them asylum. We
forbid, under penalty of anathema, anyone to shelter them in his
house or his land, and to support or have any dealings with them...
As to the Brabancons, Aragonese, Navarese, Basques, Cottereaux,
and Triaverdins ... who practise such infamy on Christians that they
spare neither churches, nor monasteries, nor widows, nor orphans,
nor elderly people, nor anyone regardless of age and sex and who,
like pagans do, destroy and spoil everything . . . we decide likewise
that those who protect them, who keep them, who give them.support
,I
I in the regions where they thus behave, are to be publicly denounced in
r
the churches on Sundays and on holy days and that they are liable to
the same sentences and punishments as heretics are and that they not
be accepted in the communion of the Church unless they renounce
this pestilent and heretical company. Let them know that they will be
deprived of all loyalty and homage and service due to them, as long as
they persist in this impurity. We are urging all the faithful, in
exchange for the remission of their sins, to effectively oppose this
sickness and to defend with the force of arms the Christian people
against it."
I!
There are three complaints against these soldierly bands which at
WAR 83
Montpellier are referred to as manades. The first is that they kill.
According to the biographer of Louis VII, 500 of the bourgeois of
Cluny who in 1166 attempted to repulse one of these bands (the
bourgeois had organized into a parish militia within the framework
of peace institutions similar to those in Languedoc) were killed at
once, and when the avenging King arrived in the area, he was escorted
by pitiful crowds of widows and orphans. When routiers are the one
waging it, war thus takes on an atrocious face, one that is said to be
unheard of. Another evil on their part: they rob the poor. Rigord
writes that Philip Augustus did not take them into his service - which
is false - and tells ..... which is true - that they raped peasant women in
front of their bound husbands, that they seized priests - cantadours,
as these southern troopers called them - and that they beat them up
until they agreed to sing mass for them - this because these folks said
to be heretics, and who liked to engage in debauchery, did not readily
do without canticles. And yet, the third accusation, the most serious
one, is that these brigands are, on top of everything else, sacrilegious.
The monks of Cluny went to meet the Brabancons, unarmed but
bearing crosses and reliquaries and they were singing voluntarily. In
vain they sprinkled the Brabancons with holy water and brandished
crucifixes under their noses; the fiends did not retreat. On the
contrary, they manhandled the monks, took away all their sacred
vestments and sent them back stark naked. Innocent III accuses them
of stealing the copes and the books in the vestries; Rigord accuses
them of burning churches, throwing the Eucharist to the ground and
trampling the hosts underfoot - because they steal chalices and do not
dare touch the consecrated wafers with their hands - and of taking
communion cloth and of making veils out of it for their "whores and
tramps." At Dun-Ie-Roi, not only was their camp found to be full of
ciboriums -but the 900 women who were first raped before having
their throats slit by the fighters of peace well deserved it: they were
strutting around in church vestments. We touch here upon the depth
of their abomination. This vermin vomited by the marginal fringes,
by the dark boundaries of the social body and the distant alien
regions of the kingdom, makes a mockery of the most rigorous
taboos: it even goes so far as to decorate the bodies of women with
altar cloth. The world must be quickly cleansed of them: through fire
and the sword.
In fact, any Brabancon who lets himself be captured alive is
immediately put to death. To avenge God's Church, in 1166 the good
King Louis VII has them all hanged in pairs from forked gibbets,
refusing in a noble gesture the large ransoms some of them offered
him. In 1182, Richard Lionheart seizes a corps of routiers; he
 84 COMMENTARY
massacres a part of it, and spares eighty poor devils whom he sends
off on the road after putting their eyes out as an example. The
following year, on the evening following the combat of Dun-le-Roi,
the pile of corpses is burned so as to purify the earth. And yet, the
infection is tenacious; the aroma of money keeps it up, as do the
rivalries of princes, enraged with each other, and who in the pursuit
of these rivalries leave no stone unturned. It reappears ceaselessly,
irrupting through all the cracks of the ordered world. At Bouvines,
the Braban<;ons are still there, though on the wrong side, t1lat of t~
reprobates and the traitors. Arid PhIhp's t1lurifersgIOiiJ:Y him, the good
;e.Jl1aster, the kmg of peace, who for a long time employed the Brabancons
\. ....-.j. but has refused for the past several years to make use of this repulsive
}\ "\0;;< tool. In the camp of Oriflamme, there are neither women nor cottereaux.
~~ 1/').. None of the foot soldiers we see there are the salaried of blood and
, vice; they are all provided by right-thinking communes, and are
blessed by the bishops. They serve the established order, work to
restore the peace, the peace of God and the peace of the King which
are merging together. The winner's hands are clean.
The twelfth century witnessed the spread of a second innovation, also
-sarrrchrt"ous, also tarmsned by the appeal 01 gam conderimed by the
....Church. This one is a game 1 the tournament. whose influence
.,..,.determined the behavior of the people fighting at BouvLne~Weknow
little of its history. lfie word Itself appears in die Chronicle of Saint
Martin of Tours, in the year 1066. At that time, several barons had
been killed in the Angers area and it is said of one of them, Geoffroy
of Preuilly: torneamenta inuenit. We cannot believe that he was their
inventor; the practice of simulated fights was indeed quite old in a
society which put so much emphasis on war. Moreover, the historian
Nithard describes one of these fantasias occurring during the
celebrations which, at Strasbourg in the eleventh century, accompanied
he peace meeting between Charles the Bald and Louis the German.
The important point is that the enthusiasm for this' sort of
Q entertainment was already quite lively between the Loire and the
Escaut at the threshold of the twelfth century. The panegyrist of the
ood Count Charles of Flanders wrote of him towards 1125 that" for
the honor of the county and the exercise of his knights, he fought the
counts and the princes of Normandy and of Flanders; at the head of
two hundred knights he engaged in tourneys which added to his
renown as well as to the power and glory of his county." These
friendly meets where one played at fighting were thus at that time
yearly and routine. However, a date can be established, a major
WAR 85
turning point in the chronology of tournaments: 1130. In this year, in
the conjoined councils ,of Reims and Clermont, the pontifical
authOrIty found it necessary to vituperate:..:sh~~.a~:iilQiiQl~.!illi.Q.!ls
offairs [using the text .of thIS canon, me Third Lateran Council in
1179 was to add the comment "which are commonly called
tournaments"] where knights are in the habit of going." Interdicts,
sanctions - less serious, however, than for breaches of the rules of
peace: "neither penance nor viaticum, but only burial by the Church,
will be denied to the knight who dies there." The motive is that
tournaments are "occasions for the death of men and danger for
souls." The importance of not uselessly killing Christ's knights is
evident; murders of this sort engender rancor and the urge for
vengeance. This keeps up the internal conflicts which the peace of
God seeks to reduce; they weaken - and this is the essential point - an
army whose objective remains Jerusalem and the protection of the
Holy Sepulchre. Moreover, these combats for pleasure - William of
Newburg defines them thus: "devoid of any intervention of hatred,
but for the sole exercise and the display of forces of the body" - are
<kmonstrations of vanityz, games of chance like the game of dice
where, for no reason, appeal is made to the judgment of God. All
good Christians must abstain from them, just as they abstain from
cursing, because they are sacrilegious. ~tiderthe...desiKfo~ worldly
glort'E<:~~~~hesep..:rades~~..i.~hJQ.r...this..r.easQn-have-areputation
~Y:.---- ----
The interdict remained all through the twelfth century. In 1149,
immediately after the ending of the second Crusade, Saint Bernard
urged Suger "to arm himself with the sword of the spirit to prevent
the rebirth of a diabolical practice which threatens us again. Having
barely returned from the journey, the prince Henry, son of the Count
of Champagne, and Robert, the King's brother, are in a state of
mutual enmity and are calling for one of these damned and despicable
fairs following the Easter celebrations where they plan to engage in a
fight to the death." With the exception of such times as in 1190 when,
in the seriousness of the preparations for the great armed pilgrimage
to the sepulchre of the Lord, the games were interrupted everywhere
for a while, the clergy's objurgations remained without effect. Princes
tolerated tournaments; sometimes they organized them; they them-
selves participated in them. In any case, they did not in any way
hinder their flowering.
There were some technical reasons for this fas . t
served to train the c Iva~ m t e new and difficult practice of lance
fencing (the bas-relief on the facade of the Angoulerne Cathedral
which is the first representation of one of these mounted jousts is
86 COMMENTARY
exactly contemporaneous with the first interdiction of tournaments).
In fact, heroes capable of skillfully unhorsing their adversaries will
all, from that time on, come from regions where tournaments were
flourishing - which is probably what led Richard Lionheart to lift the
interdicts in England. But the success of this vogue is also connected
with the evolution of political structures, the strengthening of
municipalities, and the success itself of the great lords working to
better insure the peace. It is not by chance that this game has
developed in the provinces under the tightest rein. A necessary outlet,
a safety valve, a field of catharsis, the tournament keeps busy the
knights who have been left idle by the restrictions put on real war and
at the same time it maintains their fighting skills. Charles the Good,
who is praised for having secured the peace in Flanders more
strongly, had succeeded in doing this by thus redirecting the
turbulence of his nobility outward through a seasonal escapade in the
margin, on the "marches," of a better organized State. What can
Norman warriors do when King Henry II and King Louis VII finally
agree to conclude a truce with each other? They "will engage in
tournaments everywhere." And if Arnoul, the son of the Count of
Guines, burning to live gloriously, to reach for the honor of the
world, throws himself head first into tournaments, it is also to give
himself a break from the idleness in which the absence "0£ warring
madness" keeps him in a region constrained by his father's strong
hand. He probably ought to have joined the Crusade instead. Yet
these simulated wars that are tournaments possibly also played
another role, this time symbolic: could they not be akin to ritual
dances following a new-found peace, the ending of old grudges, to
which the young warriors were ritually invited? At any rate, thjY
made their appearance at the edges of the established order, as a free
unloading of aggressivity, as its necessary ludic projection.
It is during the eighth and ninth decades of the twelfth century - at
the very time of the Third Lateran Council and the advent of King
Philip of France - that this particular form of chivalrous sociability
can best be perceived. This is thanks to two texts which both bear
witness to the rapid popularization of a literature of profane praise,
as both were composed at that time in honor of two lords of
medium rank. The first is Arnoul of Guines, Sire of Ardres - the future
combatant of Bouvines - who is celebrated by a domestic priest in the
household of his father, the count. The second is William the Marshal
- who was not at Bouvines but regretted it - whose panegyric,
rhymed in the vernacular, is based upon the recollections of his
companion in arms. Through these texts, we realize that France at
that time is indeed the paradise of tourneyers. To English chroniclers,
WAR 87
tournaments are combats "a la [rancaise," "a la gauloise," and young
William's lord advised him to leave England as soon as possible: this
is not a good country, he tells him, for vavasours and those who want
to wander; the good ones who like to "tourney" have to cross the
Channel. Where do we thenceforth see the future marshal? In
Normandy, in Anjou, in Maine, in Ile-de-France, in Hainaut, while
his sporting partners all come from the Parisis and the Valois, from
Brie, Champagne, Flanders, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Normandy,
Burgundy, and from Poitou - that is, from the great principalities of
northern France, and only from there, with the exception of Poitou.
However, the meetings are not held in the heart of these states but at
their fringes, in Brie, at the ford of the Luzy, in Burgundy between
Montbard and Rougemont, in the Soisson country, around Dreux, at
Gournai, at Lagny, at ]oigny, always away from the large towns and
castles, in the confines of large feudal powers, in the areas of the old
Gallic forests which in the past had marked boundaries between
tribes and which are still a sort of neutral zone where it is also
customary to hold peace-making assemblies, where the highest lords
agree to come to render homage and where, as at Bouvines, battles
usually take place.
The impression of deliberate marginality is confirmed when the
persons of the tourneyers themselves and their place in society are
considered. They are fur the most part "youth." By this is meant that
this game usually fills a stage in the course Of a knight's existence, a
stage which can itself be perceived as a "march," a more or less
lengthy interval between apprenticeship years and the time when,
married and a father, the man of noble blood is finally established in
the full responsibility of seignorial management, within the orderly
framework made up of his house, his family, and responsibility for his
patrimony and kindred. In this context, the tournament appears yven
more ,~~ <!. r~~~~ejJl~fructuresoflJrdef01s
a "remrection of turbulence. This is because it is properTYthe business
c5nrdliIt"Y()lrtli"\vIiO-are already knights but to whom the elders of
the lineage do not want to or cannot give a wife, and who are thus not
yet inserted, installed amongst the seniores, who have no economic
independence, who do not know what to do in their father's house,
who get in the way and are expelled from it.
Let us consider Arnoul of Guines: as soon as he reached the age to
participate in the games making for the education of the future
warrior, he left the household of his father who entrusted him to his
own lord, the Count of Flanders. There he was found to be brave,
good at handling weapons, quick to serve, generous, cheerful,
handsome, sweet, graciosus: his patron would have liked to dub him
88 COMMENTARY
himself but courteously left the "glory" of this gesture to his father.
This latter, on the day of Pentecost of the year 1181 - this is the only
precise date given in this biography, a d~tail.which says mUCh. about
the value given to this ceremony at that time m the world of prmces-
gives to Arnoul, and on the same occasion to four other young men,
the slap "which must not to be returned" an? thus l~ft~ them thro~gh
"the chivalrous sacraments" to virile perfection. ThIS IS accompamed
by great rejoicing: clowns are there, along with juggle!"s to sing
praises. They eat. They drink. The next day, accompamed by the
pealing of bells, the new knight is received by the monks and t~e
clerks in the church of Ardres. But right away, Arnoul departs. HIS
house again rejects him and his father gives him "aid and patronage"
for two years in other words, he gives him a pension and protects
him with his' power. He lets him "wander in many countries,"
chooses a mentor for him to give him advice regarding "tournaments
and the spending of deniers." This mentor then puts at the side of the
still green young man one of his nephews, an arms' trainer of proven
expertise since he had been the companion of young Henry, the son of
the King of England. "Omnes Ghisnensis terre torniatores," 'all the
sportsmen of the land then gather around Arnoul who has become a
sort of prince of youth, invested for a while, for the glory of the
lineage and the country, with those functions of prowess and
munificence it would not be proper for older lords to perform so
recklessly. After these two years, Arnoul seems to have indulged in
the pleasure of errantry an even longer time, .this time ?espite his
father and without subsidies. In 1199 he was still tourneymg, but by
then he was well provided with money because the Count of Guines
wanted his son to join the Crusade and was giving him the means to
do so. Arnoul, however, was not tempted by the adventure of the
Holy Land; he did not know what to do with all this mo~ey and was
squandering it in gifts and adornments: the preparation for the
Crusade had become a sort of intermission in the tournaments. In the
meanwhile, however, he had become famous; in many regions, writes
his biographer, they were singing his praise as a hero and th~ glory of
Guines. He would have wanted to settle down, to become m turn a
senior, thus to marry, and marry wealth, because it did not appear
that his father would soon die and leave him the inheritance. He then
shows off his prowess in front of all potential parties, thus succeeding
in flushing out a fabulous heiress, the Countess of Boulogne. He
pretends to love her, goes through all the ritual of courtly seducti~n:­
and we sense his father following the maneuver from afar - but It IS
here that his prey is snatched away, as we have seen, by Renau~ of
Dammartin. At any rate, this example well shows that the .knight
WAR 89
engages in tournaments up to his marriage; he does not know what
else to do.
Very similarly, in fact, some time previously King Henry II of
England,.on the occasion of his eldest son's twentieth birthday, had
offered him a year and a half of errantry, and the latter then added
seven more years to this kind of sporting peregrination. In the course
of the interminable excursion, William the Marshal leads "Young"
Henry, attempting, not without trouble, to teach him to be a good
fighter, thus becoming "sire and master of his lord," and this was
legitimate as he was raising him in prowess. As to William, he himself
"wandered" for more than twenty years, until 1181 when he left for
the Holy Land where he remained for three years. Upon returning, he
served Henry II another two years and ended up getting married in
1190. He was past his forties when he settled down. Thus, the
tournament involves age, but mostly economic minority: the players
are all those, very numerous, who are kept at the unstable margin,
often for a very long time, by the structure of patrimonies and the
cautiousness of lineage marriage politics.
Normally, the ludic exercise is thus in some ways delegated to the
son of the lord but it sometimes happens that the latter must assume it
himself. This is the case when he accedes to power in the springtime
of the body and when the eldest of his sons is not yet trained enough
to lead, in his stead, the youth of the region to the tournaments. He
could not abstain himself without being less loved, more badly
served, and seeing escape from his hands that which bridled in
tumu~t. w.e have seen that the Count Charles of Flanders personally
led hIS chivalry to the tournaments each year. Baudouin, Count of
Hainaut, does likewise. In 1171, the year of his accession, he begins
by presiding on Christmas Day over a banquet, the feast in the dead
of winter, the great gorging of well-born men whose nobility is
marked by gluttony-But as soon as the weather clears up a little, he
departs. Eighty knights follow him; they come and go in Champagne
~nd in Brie, participating in two meets. At Lent he comes back, goes
mto retreat, and like everyone else champs at the bit. Easter finally
arrives, and immediately after, on the following day and until
Pentecost, he again leads his troop - now more than a hundred
knights strong - to the edges of Burgundy, and then to Rethel. For
him and for his peers, governing means this above all.
Princes are thus present at all the tournaments described in the
Chanson de Guillaume le Marechal: the Count of Flanders, the Duke
of Burgundy, the Counts of Clermont, of Boulogne, of Saint-Pol- all
the future leaders in the Battle of Bouvines who were then in their
youth, and if not them, their fathers. Not a single prince of northern
 90 COMMENTARY
France is missing. There is one single exception, however: the kings.
In 1194, when he organizes a network of tournaments in England,
Richard Lionheart, the model of knighthood, does not become
involved in person. He has himself represented by his half-brother,
the Count of Salisbury. This because no one thinks that these profane
entertainments, which are looked on askance by the bishops, are
suited to the royal dignity which is connected to the sacred by so
many ties. The Capetian allows his brothers to indulge in those
games, but not his eldest son who is to succeed him and whose sword
must remain pure, ar BOuv~stus is rhe only one:- ~ho
~ never participated ~ tourname : = o l eOI
the aristocrati~~. ~.!!L_ Jithem-E ance I . ne
esca"paae:-""~out every two weeks there were tournaments m one
pIaceor another." In the crammed calendar of competitions, ~
opens up the only break of any length and it is shortened as mu
--pussible. The-cime-cl-abS'a8~n , eryone rus es back to
the game, and they all redouble their efforts as Shrove Tuesday nears.
The accounting of his tournament profits which William the Marshal,
good manager that he was, had someone keep ~or him for a year t~us
goes from Pentecost to the following Mar~1 Gras. ~he sportmg
festival does not stop, not even m wmter. It Ignores ram and cold.
Tourneying is a passion.
It is a team sport, as in real war, as in the war of the routiers. The
youth who were one day traveling past Clairvaux and whom Sai~t
Bernard attempted, by preaching to them, to turn away from evil,
from the folly of useless fighting, were in a band, they formed a
mesnie, a manade. Consequently we need to reject the image of
individual jousts on a narrow field clearly fenced by lists and which
would have pitted two horsemen armed with lances against each
other: this image is false for well into the fourteenth century. The
tournament of the time I speak of here is not a duel, but a crush where
nobody fights one to one. Teams confront each other, each with their
colors and their captains. For his glory and that of his ancestors, and
so that he would be talked of among the ladies, each captain aims at
leading the best and strongest troop. Baudouin of Hainaut started. out
with only eighty fighters. Two years later a much larger retmue
followed him: 200 knights, 1200 foot soldiers. As for Henry the
Young,
There was no good knight
Bold and proven in arms
Who did not wish to follow him.
WAR 91
At the Lagny tourney, fifteen banner holders fought for him, each
with his own band. Henry had recruited them in England, in
Normandy, and in Anjou, but also in Ile-de-France - thus from a
natural enemy region, but it was the land of champions. Tournament
bands are accidental groupings and are consequently heterogeneous.
Their unity is marked by signals, rallying cries, emblems painted on
shields - the rapid progress of heraldry at this time probably stems
more from tournaments than from war. Their cohesion comes mostly
from high pay and it is at this point that money first intervenes. This is
because all the team members are, strictly speaking, hired. Those who
accompany Henry the Young
Received twenty-five sous per day
Whether on the road or sojourning
As soon as they left their land.
Thus we see the bids go up for the most famous players. The
'evening following Gournai, the "great men" fight.over the Marshal,
black and blue from all the blows he received but glittering with
renown. "Each wants to have him": the Count of Flanders and the
Duke of Burgundy go so far as to offer him a yearly pension of
240,000 deniers. The stars are promised fortunes, and quick ones.
Permanent rivalry, the incessant pursuit of glory, here more than
anywhere else make money flow from the hands of the wealthiest.
More than genuine war, the tournament, which has no respite, is the
instrument of redistribution amongst the lower chivalry of the money
amassed by the princes. And from there, the flow spreads to many
other folk: before each meet, one must of course equip oneself, buy
horses - those fragile tools. Between two tournaments, at the winter
fair of Lagny, William the Marshal goes to choose the best mounts.
He pays the horse traders a high price for them, he who when very
young had to trade for a good steed the precious coat he had received
as gift on the day of his dubbing. Since then, the champion has made
his fortune. An immense network of trade thus develops around each
sporting meet, and it is with good reason that the Church writers,
always on the look out for the right word, had, prior to making up
the neologism torneamentum, used the word nundinae which means
"fairs." The tourney has all the traits of the fair: the safe-conduct
promised to those who attend it, the sudden springing up of tents
where, pitching camp for a few days, will be the breeders, the
peddlers and hawkers of merchandise, food and drink, the blacksmiths,
the entertainers, the whores, all those who lend or exchange deniers,
all those who earn or steal them:
92 COMMENTARY
So many have come from right and left
That the whole area is teeming ...
You could see horses from Spain,
From Lombardy and from Sicily ...
And this makes for an enormous movement of money.
The place and the date are agreed upon a long time previously ana
the announcement is spread everywhere, from court to court. In the
team leaders' houses, during the days preceding the game,
The hall fills with knights...
All night long the knights
Roll their hauberk, polish their chausses
And repair their armor,
The collars, the caparisons,
The saddles and bits, the breast-pieces and bridles.
In the town, in the neighboring village, or even closer to the field, in
the assemblage of pavilions which Has formed, the bands come and
settle into their quarters. They visit, they drink together, they play
dice; there are negotiations with stragglers for final engagements;
alliances are made; tactics to be followed during the great
divertissement are discussed. Occasionally, a kind of novillada
precedes it, a meet of the very young, but which is ever looked upon
only as gentle fun. At dawn on the appointed day, the warriors arm
themselves in front of the reces, the fence where the cowards will find
refuge. The teams then rejoin each other, they assemble, collect into
strong "battalions," which themselves line up on two sides. There is
neither solitary combat nor a closed field. When, at the appointed
time, the signal for departure is given - some cheats having already
started the move toward the best positions - the troops deploy over a
very large area, without set boundaries and dotted with obstacles to
be used either for ambush or retreat. At the tourney of Anet, the
French thus retreated for a while onto an old mound, the hillock of a
ruined castle, while fifteen disbanded knights found shelter in a barn
for the time required to regroup themselves into a company. The
combat is even pursued into the streets of the villages. Simon of
Neaufles was blocking one with his men: he was' taken. William the
Marshal, who was leading him away, was holding his horse by the
bridle; he turns around; the captive was not in the saddle any more
but was hanging by his armor on a roof gutter. It is a real war, full of
ambushes and surprises - for the fun of it. As in war, the chiefs make
use of foot soldiers armed with pikes and bows. However, as in war,
the only real players are knights. Sometimes, foolishly, they venture
WAR 93
alone, but if they keep a level head, they remain elbow to elbow in a
closely knit group, an unbreakable group of ten, twenty, or at most
thirty knights - which is called a conroi, a formation- tight as a fist, a
genuine unit, one so compact that they say a glove thrown into the air
when falling would hit either a horse or a rider. "Between their
lances, the wind cannot blow:" it could not have been better said than
by the Chanson d'Aspremont. Just as in his wanderings, the young
knight is solitary only in the fiction of the novels of Brittany and in
fact never separates from a few companions, likewise, he never fights
very far away from his friends except when rage, greed, or excess
overtake him and then, in most cases, cause his fall. Warring societies
are agglutinating societies, and the action consists precisely in
splitting up adversary corps, in disjoining them. Victory smiles upon
those teams which know how to wait, how to maintain their
cohesiveness, how to let others tire themselves, become overexcited,
scatter, so as to then push them into disorder and force them into the
rout which usually ends the tournament. In 1182, at Gournai, there
were expressions of surprise that the tourney did not end this way:
There was so much good adventure
That there was no discomfiture
In any camp. They separated
By agreement...
Ordinarily, after long hours of lying in wait, a rout suddenly occurs;
it is the moment for profitable captures in the panicky flight of
disrupted conrois.
f\.s in rea~:::~~~e~~t:.l: "w.i , " glo~~t-of-,
n
all money. e ,nhei~chol"eturn
om er. The "plaidisse jousts," that is, stakeless jousting at
assemblies, are rare: they do not attract many people. Knights go to
the tourney as they go to the gambling den, to "lose or to win all."
They want to seize the horses and their equipment that are so
valuable, but most of all they want to capture men. In this aim, they
join together with others so as .to catch the most desirable prey.vto
force a given adversary to concede defeat, and then, on his word, to
let him free so as to continue the game - thus oftentimes a knight is
taken several times in a single day. Come evening, everyone inquires
of their kin, their friends: have they won, have they lost? The
captured war-horses are led to the winners. In freedom, the prisoners
ponder their ransoms, try to raise the huge pile of money, which is not
easy. The game in fact is played out on much more money than is
possessed by all the participants put together: on some evenings, a
cause for surprise was the Marshal pulling out of his bags several
 94 COMMENTARY
hundred deniers to pay cash for his ransom. Usually, the captive gave
a pledge; he found amongst his kin those who were willing to give a
bond. As happens at the close of a fair, a process is thus initiated of
compensations, contracts, transfers, debts to be postponed till the
next meet promises whose solid base is an ethic of honor. A whole
network ;f exchanged oaths, the use of a money of words, a fictitious
money to which they are forced to have recourse, just as merchants
have to in their meetings because of the scarcity of coins. And since it
is the capture of men which is the most profitable, everyone avoids
damaging the adversary overmuch. Councils condemn tournaments
because killings do occur in them. Indeed, this violent sport makes as
many, and probably more, victims as war: it is enough to become
convinced of this to add up in those genealogies that can be
reconstructed the number of juvenes who died in those demonstrations
of daring. But these deaths are all accidental and are the more bitterly
deplored in the field as they result in a serious lack of profit for the
adversary party.
The tournament must thus be perceived - and it is again in this that
it resembles a fair - as the locus of a very lucrative activity, the only
place where knights could enrich themselves as fast as merchants and,
at that time, it possibly provided the opportunity for the largest
transfers of wealth. The role of tourneys in the economy of th~
twelfth century is equivalent to the one filled earlier by the pious
donations of a population that the priests used to keep more tightly i
~ hand. This is all the more reason for the Church to condemn those
~ .....'-' ~r~ competing ~ith.3h~r.itY..3.!l~_ Q~.sa?se they
~~v; .......epea..up the only breaCh thrQl!g!fWliiCfittie spI!l!-Q.tgam_ca~
~ ... ~ristocratic va I ues.
~.....d-. ..... -------
~;. '11'"," . Of course, ~e can be ruined there, through cowardice, clumsiness,
') or bad luck. But ultimately it is the princes who bear the cost of all
these losses. They pay for the feast, and the money which they can
easily borrow from the bourgeois is used to compensate the unlucky
teams, to replace slain horses and broken hauberks, to payoff
ransoms as well as to disburse the pay. This, while the bulk of the
profits go to a few knights, such as some of Bertrand of Born's
sirventes whose ability he praises and whose rapid rise he justifies. In
fact, it only takes a few years for the virtuosos of equestrian jousting
to climb the rungs of the ladder of fortune.
William the Marshal was one of those magnificent champions.
While
The tide began to rise
Of his price and of his prowess
By which he was rising in heights
WAR 95
he took an associate, a Flemish knight who was also a member of
Henry the Young's mesnie: with two of them, business was bound to
improve greatly. Thus "he asked him for his company," and the
partnership lasted for two years. It had its accountant, Henry the
Young's kitchen clerk whose function in the team was primarily that
'Of keeping track of expenses. For the two parties, he tallied up the
receipts. They were so large that he did not bother with the value of
the horses and their equipment but only kept the list of ransomed
knights: 103 in ten months - a wonderful list of trophies and
innumerable fistfuls of deniers.
And yet, chivalrous morality im oses disdain upon those deni~s.
This et IC arose out 0 t e tournament itself, in the very course of this
money game, and it is hardened by the rise of the greedy: the
tradesmen and the mercenaries. This rise is increasingly threatening,
and the aristocracy foresees that it will soon threaten the material
foundation of its pre-eminence. The 00 i h e
materially motivated. Prowess is useless without largess. The world of
tourneyers pretends to seek not gain but the "prize," that is, glory.
William the Marshal, having come alone to the tourney of Pleurs,
according to his panegyrist,
He would hear nought of gain
But to do good entirely strove
Rather than having gain on himself bestowed.
That which IS worth more he won
As very rich is made the one
Who conquers and wins honor.
He is shown later on at ]oigny, distributing his share to the
Crusaders:
And he freed from their prisons
The knights ne had taken,
Who were worth a high price.
The supreme worth - which is moreover itself a source of profit for
those who come near it as a high rank on the palmares allows one to
rent oneself out to the captains at a higher price - lies in the prize
bestowed upon the best men at the close of the tournament following
the deliberations of the "great men." This is a symbolic reward. (At
Pleurs, it was a brooch; a lady comes up to offer it to the Duke of
Burgundy who refuses it, and then to all the leaders who refuse it in
turn. Finally, two knights and one squire solemnly carry it over to
William the Marshal. They find him with his head on the anvil, the
smith. working with all his might, with pliers and hammer, to free him
96 COMMENTARY
from his helmet which had been hit and smashed in down to his
neck.)
The major significance with which the "prize" is charged as the
thirteenth century nears needs to be brought out. It is a prize which
decidedly confers upon the tournament its aspect of a meet, of a
competition for honor, and which finally rovides the basis for all
those i erce ti le movement . dy
behavior on the eve of Bouvines. This, for two reasons: firstly,
bCC"ause the moment is thatof thejJroliferation of mercenai!:' and
conse,guently it becomes necessary to s6 re u the ethic of n~ }~
S'eCO'~dly,becwse the -3iStrl unon of laurels occurs in front of
women. Indeed, ladies are not absent from these festivals of violence.
Sometimes, as at Pleurs, they are the ones who give the winner, with
their own hands, the emblem of his valor. On the morning of the
Joigny tourney, the knights who were getting ready saw the countess
and her ladies appear. The men put down their helmets and rushed to
meet them. They took each other's hands to dance. One of the knights
asked: "... who will be so courteous / As to sing?" William the
Marshal, of course: he begins to sing a lay which they all take up.
Thus tournaments at that time were also training grounds for
courtesy. Everyone knew that one could also win the love of ladies
there through certain attitudes, which could be learned. Moreover, at
this very point, other professionals intervened, "these story tellers
[histrions] which we call heralds." Publicity agents, impresarios - but
also merchants of glory: "when they see someone work with virility
and power at the exercise of arms," they compose a song in his honor,
which on the morning of Joigny was done by "... a singer / Who was
a new herald." Clearly his refrain said: "Marshal, / Give me a
beautiful horse." And William could do no less than to capture a war-
horse during the combat and offer it to him.
The important outcome of this sort of celebration was that
individual prowess came to be exalted. In this, the tournament was
becoming the locus of another major mutation. Even though the
confrontation required closeness within conrois, required tightly
joined teams, in the course of the ups and downs of the game a few
individuals emerged from the crowd, climbed the rungs of "highness":
renown, carried by tales and praises, come to focus solely upon these
champions - as it did in the Bouvines accounts. Only they were seen.
And yet, the basis of their rise was material: these people were the
winners, thus they could well afford to pay the praisemakers. But the
profit motive was sublimated. Just as through the show of largess
knights intended to keep a distance from enriched bourgeois, in the
face of cottereaux and Brabancons who worked honestly, seriously
WAR 97
but without panache, they felt compelled to valor, to ostentatious
courage, to arabesques of temerity - a courage whose judges were the
women, deeply moved by an enthusiasm which weakened their
defenses and made them easier to conquer. Courage summarized
prowess, the first amongst noble virtues, and it was at that time that
cowardice gradually became villainy. Thenceforth prowess was the
virtue of an individual man, whose action of course remained entirely
dependent on team solidarity but who looked upon his glory as his
own property, as wealth which freed him from his group and which
he intended to make bear fruit alone - just as a bag of money which
personally belongs to the individual merchant transporting it in the
midst of a caravan. Tournaments were permanent team and money
sports, games that were performed in freedom, in profanity, under the
threat of Church reprisals, and thus prowess in the tournament
became the basis of freedom and self-assurance. Prowess liberated the
individual from the real-life, necessary, constraining, at times
suffocating, hold of lineage and of friendship. It conferred the illusion
of solitude, this glorious, exalting, imaginary solitude of vagabond
Percevals and Gawains.
!he event that is Bouvines is illuminated when set into its true place,
In the long flow of all the progress which during the twelfth century
changed the forms of military action. This place lies in the thread of
technical improvements consistently leading to the reinforcement of
defensive weapons and which ended up turning into a strategic key to
all combats a joust of heavy cavalry, horsemen who were invulnerable
and, because of this, less tremulous. It lies at the heart of the slow
hardening of the political structures through which real war finds
itself gradually imprisoned into the ordinances of peace controlled by
the great princes, and which caused the flowering of tournaments. It
lies in the progressive invasion by a power, that of money, which
made knights more concerned with defending their privileges, made
them worry about the competition of mercenaries, and of wealthy
merchants, made them attentive as well to the muffled tremors of
revolt which anyone who would listen could perceive from the depths
of the subjugated people.
But the event also has its place within the steady movement of a
cultural growth. In 1214, knights who do not know how to read, 0t
at least to recite poems-and sing, are becoming increasingly rare. This
explains the new consistency, amongst the ordo of the men of war of
an ideological system whose autonomy affirms itself with regard to
~nother.system, specific to the ?'len of prayer. We have some difficulty
In making out the more ancient forms and the long germination
98 COMMENTARY
which prepared the fruition of this system of representations,
concepts, images, and ritual emblems at the time of Bouvines. This is
because for a very long time, up to the beginning of the twelfth
century, all the cultural objects sturdy enough to last till our time, all
the written and visual discourses had been the work of priests or
monks, and the historian must guess, through what these people have
expressed, what the warriors then had in mind. This is not easy,
particularly in view of the fact that, half a century before Bouvines,
the overall attitude of the Church with regard to the militia was still
aggressive and reproving if we are to judge by accounts, the most
illuminating of which came, up to that time, from the monasticism
which still dominated ecclesiastical institutions and which professed
to disdain the world of flesh and wished itself to be the instigator of
penance. QnIy~.Q..~ path to perfection was " he ~night: this
was "conversion." e nee s to un~ilitaq.-..baldnc , to.-dpn
. '---YSI1abTt~~~;e;Tf moribund, into m 'orde s:
. e could not etter prepare Imself to ace death and judgment.
Orderic Vital tells us of the activities of one of these propagandists of
renunciation, a domestic clerk by the name of Gerold of Avranches
who at the threshold of the twelfth century, was chaplain in the
house of Hugh of Chester: "he observed in. several knights, and
rightly reproached them for it, the petulance of the flesh. He depl,o~ed
the excessive neglects with which most of them treated the divine
office. He multiplied salutary warnings to the principal barons, the
simple knights and to the 'youth.' He drew from the New Testament
and from Christian feast days examples of saintly warriors deserving
of admiration.' He was thus narrating the stories of the livesof martyrs,
of the cavalier saints George, Theodorus, Sebastian, Demetrius, and
also Saint Maurice and Saint Eustache. But he spoke as well of "the
saint champion William [of Orange] who, after many combats,
renounced the world and then fought piously for the Lord under
monastic rule." Jugglers, adds Orderic, usually sang ·"a song of this
saint," but it is better to rely on what the learned men of the Church
say of him and he himself.gives a version of this geste, which he heard
from a monk of Winchester and which he judges to be more
authentic. The hero has first waged just war: "He had to sustain
many struggles against overseas Barbarians, and against Saracens of
the area; with divine help, he saved God's people with hi~ sword and
added to the empire of Christianity." But, one day, despite the tears
and the entreaties of the whole of the nobility, he decided to leave the
world and went to offer his arms to Saint Julien of Brioude. "To God,
he presented his helmet and then a very beautiful shield, laying them
down on the tomb of the martyr." At the very heart of this sanctuary,
WAR 99
in the crypt, he had thus set down his defensive weapons. But he had
left at the door the more threatening arms of aggression. On foot and
wearing a cilice, he then took the road as a penitent, a pilgrim of
Christ, to the monastery which he himself had founded at Gellone.
There he ended his days in humility and in menial work. "It is thus
that Gerold often told of the titles to glory of the invincible warriors
of the Lord and, sometimes sweetly and sometimes threateningly, he
encouraged those who lived with him and the men of arms to take up
this kind of life." His exhortations were effective: five of those
knights joined the -abbey of Saint-Evroul where Orderic was writing.
At that time, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was exhibiting the same
attitude. At the same time that the Councils of Reims and of
Clermont were condemning tournaments, he was writing his Book
of Praise-2.f.. the NE!!-~' Militia, malicia: the profane militia
serve the DevlI, not God. "You put silken wraps on your horses, you
cover your hauberks with God knows how many pieces of cloth;
you decorate your axes, your shields, and your saddles with paint;
you squander silver, gold, and precious stones on your bits and spurs.
Are these the insignia of the military condition? Would those
ornaments not be more suited for women? You can be seen, like
women, nurturing a mass of hair which hides your sight, wrapping (I' ",\1 1
yourselves in long shirts which go down to your feet, and hiding your_ ,,~l­
delicate hands in sleeves that are as wide as they are long.... :J,tis. (}
pride, it is excess, which moves the knights: "fits-of madness which rh'~",/C; t
"tIlr"ow them- mto cOIl115ats." Thus ""you must fear killing your soul 1.';1 t,
with the same blow with which you kill your adversary, or to receive t.- .. I \.. l.,
from his hand death both in the body and in the soul." Thanks to !
God, "a new chivalry' is born in the world," that of the religious 1~<.l~il ..<
military orders, those of the Temple and of the Hospital,' recently l--
founded in "the Holy Land "in the very land that the rising sun has ..... -<- 'r
come to visit from the heig.hts of the heavens. In this way, at the place c &,.\41
where it itself [the rising sun] has with its powerful hand vanquished \. ,,\.
the prince of darkness, the sword of this valorous chivalry will soon c.. 1
exterminate its satellites, by which I mean these sons of faithlessness. ,} t ."vL- ~
It [the new chivalry] will once again redeem God's people and will ........ • l¥
make grow, under our own eyes, the corn of the sun, in the house of
the Lord, his son." he Templars have renounced the world, luxu
vanity - "they cut their 'r ecause ey ee, as st e does,
~t is shameful for a man to fuss with his hair," they have rejected
superficiality, rejected the concern with profane glory. They battle as
a community - as Brother Guerin had done for a .long time - in
discipline and in prudence, in "ordered battalions." They wage a
double combat, against the flesh and the blood and against "the
 100 COMMENTARY
malevolent spirits spread about in the air." These knights are to be
T WAR
followed by all those lacking the courage to completely renounce the
pleasures of war. Bernard of Clairvaux himself had converted while
still a young knight. He calls all others to conversion and dreams of
abbeys filled with penitent, pure, and poor knights.
.During that same period, monastic structures had adapted so as to
welcome adults giving up their worldly weapons. Very early on,
Benedictine communities had admitted knights who on their death
bed had asked to don the cowl and the robe. In the course of the
twelfth century they opened up to these "bearded converts," old
fighters battered and tired of campaigns who were looking for a
peaceful and pious retreat. They had not learned to sing the office and
the monks in the cloisters of Cluny sometimes had trouble deciding
how to keep them busy.
I
I.
It was for the men of arms that the fraternities of Templars and
Hospitalers were formed and then rapidly expanded. These even
accepted recruits "of intention," such as William the Marshal who at
the close of his "youth," nearing the age of forty, had joined the
Order of the Temple but without really entering it. He had donned
the.mantle of the order at one time, but it was to be used only once, to
cover his remains during his funeral. The flexibility of these openings,
this easy osmosis between monastic and worldly life, gradually
strengthened the idea that, without leaving the world and in the
accomplishment of a function entrusted to him by God, the knight
could reach a sort of perfection.
Monasticism begins to I ou after the mid-twelfth century.
ence ort ,t e major role in the Chu 0 of Montgardin, knows the deeds. Those of the romances and the
'IlaVe"always remai . . atel conn Irrtar society. We
s canons fight like braves against routiers to defend the possessions
of their cathedrals. Bishops fight as well, like the Bishop of Beauvais,
Philip of Dreux, who was wielding the mace at Bouvines and who,
fifteen years earlier, had been captured by a cottereaux chief, not as a
prelate, says the Chanson de Gillaume le Marechal, "but as a knight,
all armed and the helmet laced tight." In contrast with southern
France where the sacred remains more sharply separated from the
profane (a division which causes courtly culture, the erotic and
political culture of the troubadours, the sirventes, to escape much
more easily the control of the Church), in the north squads of clerks,
in the houses of great and petty princes, rub shoulders with youths
practising their weapons and the churchmen apply themselves to
entertain them. Armed with their learning, with an intellectual store
which makes them capable of giving a poetic form to the dreams
surrounding them, the churchmen construct, for the pleasure and
education of the young men, a strongly built cultural edifice. This
101
edifice is autonomous, it is not the reflection of the sermons and
homilies that are listened to with one ear in the basilicas and at the
gates of monasteries, but rather, it fully responds to the taste of
"youth," it translates the hopes and the frustrations of bachelor
knights, those of the wandering companies and the tourneys, this age
group so large and so numerous whose cultural horizon markedly
differs. from that of the seniores, the married men.
The culture of Baudouin, Count of Guines, is literary, as was that
of the ancient kings whose behavior the princes have gradually come
to imitate. He does not know how to read; however, he keeps in his
home the kinds of books associated with schools and scholars,
dealing with sacred matters, and which transmit some of the thoughts
of the Fathers of the rc;;h. but translated from Latin into the
_ . r the count" these:ue not emptyornaments but
,a store of knmrledge in which he intends to dip, througIlthe
intermediary of readers, for the meaning of the Scriptures and of
liturgy as befits a man of his rank and age. In contrast, the culture of
his son Arnoul the Young, the tourneyer, is oral, entirely profane, and
unfolds in fantasy. Should it rain too much, the band of comrades is
forced to interrupt its wanderings. Kept idle for two days and one
night in the hall of Guines Castle, they kill time as well they can by
telling adventure stories, those of the heroes they will try to emulate.
There are three types of such adventures. Those of the Crusade, "of
the land of Jerusalem, of the siege of Antioch, .of the Arabs, of
Babylon, of overseas," of which one of Arnoul's companions, Philip
gestes; ifis Robert of Coutance who tells "the history-of the Roman
emperors, of Charlemagne, of Roland and Oliver, of King Arthur, of
the gestes and tales of Brittany, of Gormont and Isembart, of Tristan
and Iseult, of Merlin." Finally, there are their own ancestral heroes -
and this time it is a member of the kin group, Gauthier of Ecluse,
consobrinus of the young Arnoul, who has the task of telling them.
The epic of God, narratives rambling between legend and fairy tale,
the glory of the ancestors: all this is transmitted from one mouth to
another, in the repository of the memories of the "youth."
The latter, however, welcomes elders in its midst (Arnoul of Guines
lived with young men of his age but "he also retained men, old and
decrepit, because they told ancient adventures") as well as churchmen:
the priest Lambert of Ardres himself, whose account informs us of all
this. One of the fun ions of these clerks, who h been in use
nee e wog a iti"m1s, was
to set down exactly in writing this transitory oral ~rature, the
102 COMMENTARY
narratives of the Holy Land, of the emperor with the flowery beard
and his twelve peers, of knights wandering in magical forests and,
I
1
perhaps most of all, of the great deeds of the ancestors: in the course
of the twelfth century, we thus see genealogical writings take on a
new slant, transform themselves into galleries of heroic portraits,
offering to the offspring of the lineage a model of exemplary
behavior. Family memory thus becomes akin to a treasure of honor
handed down from one generation to the next, which each feels
committed to enrich, which he must at any rate avoid squandering.
These are the makings of an education of valor.
As it is the clerks who, ill th~J).orthern pan of the F..l:eIlch kiflgefHTl;
giveirs~Qm@what cont@1in~ed l>1.~l1Urch iQeology. But
this occurs in a rather unobtrusive manner, and mostly through the
spirit of the Crusades. In fact, after 1150, this literature contributes to
the strengthening of a new conception of knighthood, a lay profane
image, contrasting it with all other social bodies. Knighthood is pre-
eminent in it - "the highest order God has created" 'proclaims
Perceval - and based on a constellation of virtues. The old edifice of
honor was entirely constructed around a single·pillar: loyalty, respect
for the sworn pledge, this faithfulness to the ties of blood and the
commitments of friendship assembling conrois, war teams (what
keeps the Viscount of Beaumont, a hundred years prior to Bouvines,
from breaking an alliance, from going back on his word, from
abandoning his peers in order to make peace, is the fear of "bringing
shame and disgrace to the whole of his kindred"). But three other
virtues have gradually come to be added to the first: they are
"courtesy," an "honest" manner of behaving toward ladies, and,
more importantly, prowess and largess.
These two qualities cannot be separated from each other: language
expresses this most strongly with assonance. The -praise that the
Chanson de Giullaume le Marechal gives to the Count of Salisbury,
William Longsword, "who makes prowess his mother and largess his
banner-bearer" echoes the "and of virtue and largess" of the Roman
de Brut rhymed seventy-five years earlier. "Virtue" by itself simply
stands for courage. At the threshold of the twelfth century courage
was not one of the central values of knightly ethics, far from it. We
can well see this by the way that combatants are judged in the
Histoire anonyme de la premiere croisade, a narrative based on the
direct eyewitness account of a knight who knew about these things.
Only groups, military units, are dealt with here, and when an
individual is mentioned, it is a leader who is not judged as a person
but always with regard to the function he fills in the midst of the corps
for which he is responsible. This famous text does celebrate courage
WAR
(which, in any case, interconnections within the vocabulary link to
the concept of physical strength and prudence, and thus to static
103
qualities) but without perceiving it as a lack of fear as, on the
contrary, temerity would be condemnable, would be seen as a
blindness akin to arrogance, a major sin, a capital sin since it pits man
against God. Courage - strength, wisdom - thus takes on the
appearance of a passive virtue, a posture of confident expectation,
one of firmness yet submission to divine will, one of the aspects of
hope. This is because, while man must help God realize his designs, it
would be culpable impudence to wish to force his hand: the pious
warrior is bound to accept what he can perceive as inevitable.
Courage is thus an ornament of action, its dress, which leads one to
speak of it only with adverbs and adjectives. Courage is not a motor
of action, but fear is, which is indeed expressed in discour-se with the
help of substantives and verbs. This fear is obsessive, it is always
there. It is there just before the engagement, at the moment preceding
the action, when the strength of the opponent is weighed by counting
the cavalry and foot soldiers on the other side, a count that is always
poorly executed, anxiously exaggerated. Fear wells up when the
combat begins. It can still be repressed in the ardor of the first attacks,
but it invades everything as soon as cracks in the group's cohesion
become apparent. It frees itself all at once in the rout. What is
remarkable is that this feeling is often less condemned than justified
(as it is a manifestation of true prudence, that is, of genuine courage,
of necessary humility in the face of the warnings of heaven) and that,
most of.the time, the author of the Histoire without any commentary,
simply notes it as being present, as a constant of military mentality
which, in any case, could not be a cause of dishonor.
A hundred yoors later, at the time of Bouvines eve has
chan ura _YJ lC .m£!,~ than ~s,e
makes the value o(a knight, it is that which drives him to forgo the
use of any ignominious ~eapon, of any subterfuge which might
indicate cowardice. In 1197, William the Marshal, in the company of
the Count of Flanders, was already fighting Philip Augustus. The
barons suggested retreating behind the numerous wagons that the
Flemish communes had brought along. From time to time, they
would spring forth from this refuge to joust against the French. God
forbids, answers William: there will be no communes and no wall,
but they will fight in open field without thought of retreat. In the
assembly of chivalrous virtues, Temerity has deposed Prudence and
takes up the throne. And Temerity comes with its inseparable
companion, Prodigality. This shift occurs at the very moment where
in the morality preached by the Church, through a parallel

104 COMMENTARY
displacement, pride makes way to greed for the first place among sins.
From courage comes gain, but gain is contemptible. A valorous man
could only win to give away more. Nothing justifies the profits from
real or simulated war except the virtue of wastefulness. Let us come
back once more to William the Marshal who
Traveled in many a land
For prizes and war adventures
And often came back rich
But neither greed nor meanness
Kept him from spending what he had ...
His prowesses so multiplied
And his goodness and his largess
That he was held in great esteem
By kings and queens, dukes and counts.
In the school of knighthood, which all the well-born knights of
Bouvines have frequented in the course of errantry, of tournaments,
of semi-legitimate war as well as of just war, the real war, that led by
the king along with God so as to better establish the peace, chivalry is
"This thing so strong and bold / And so hard to learn." We must not
take this word to stand for a social group any more, but rather for a
quality, an adornment of the soul: this unequally shared honor which
now graces persons rather than groups. Thus knighthood is
_profita\ili:..lt..b.cingsjn..m2E~ an? ~;>.!s of it:..Like all worId(y things, it
stems in..E~!!...fr.Q.IILtlleJ2E:~~rsei I~!_~nOwn to l1."m a shadowy sJqe,
t1ieiitding place of a secret ana Sharp Sting, se1f-mterest and tI-le·lure
of loot. But, just like the silken coats thrown over the hauberks,
ideology is th<:.~~.!~h~de th_~$rbX~g.L!,<2.p'~~:':~~hin~
colors > and-to reassure. In this way, covetousness disguises Itself as
~ it is masked by this ardent, fearless, uncalculating impetuous-
ness which pleases women and which, it has been said in the last few
years, no longer displeases God as much as it used to.
The only difference between a genuine combat and a tournament is
~.IlCil":: war . is -,
mnm et b a"hat
t e y ," nve or tuttto an d
ultio, the drive for defense and revenge. If it is conducted properly
with all due respect for interdicts, it is a just undertaking. It shatters
order for a moment, but so as to better restore it by Wiping out the
injury, by giving their rights back to all concerned. Inthe case when
there is no judicial authority to constrain the one from whom one
must defend oneself or exact vengeance, or when the victim chooses
not to register a complaint, or again when the culprit refuses to accept
the decisions of an arbitrary assembly, werra is then legitimate, more
•
WAR 105
so than the round of pleasure which the tourney is. War is not
"ostentatiousness" and pursuit of vainglory, but a necessary use of
force against an enemy of the gQ.od who ~g...iustiee. The
offensive must unavoidably be taken to force the adversary to yield,
", to let go, to accept the words of appeasement, to redress the wrongs
he has caused. In order to intimidate him, to reduce him, to make him
listen to reason, what could be better than to go and ruin his land?
With this pretext, war then takes on its very ancient face, that of an
enterprise of plunder which pitted the tribes against each other every
~ single year. It is a gathering of loot in which everyone indulges to his
;J heart's content with a clear conscience and also shows off his valor to
'I
'I the full: there is no better fighter than the one "who is possessed by
the drive to do great harm." The leader aims to find compensation for
his trouble while his followers have come for nothing else than gain,
and their eagerness fully measures up to their cupidity. In 1127, in
1 Flanders, Galbert of Bruges describes the hundreds of knights and all
those capable of carrying a weapon amongst the members of the
urban communes hurrying towards an honorable goal: to avenge the
murdered count. They have finally pushed back the murderers into
the church of the castle of Bruges, they are" full 'of daring and eager to
fight, seeing the people besieged in front of them, gathering their
courage, thinking how beautiful it would be to die for their father and
the fatherland, of the glory which the winners would receive, and
how criminal and dastardly were the traitors who had turned the
temple of Christ into their lair - eager mostly for the treasure and the
money of the Lord Count, they were thinking of the booty they would
get after overtaking those who were besieged and," adds the excellent
observer Galbert, "this alone was enough to fan their zeal," The
warriors will take everything, each man for himself, or rather each
group for itself. This is a grabbing match, a melee of rapacious
hounds over the kill- with only rare exceptions when the war leader
attempts with little success to proceed to an equitable distribution of
the spoils.
Thu e-scale action risks being interru ted at an moment
_b}:' ..!.he setting in motion 0 p1.lli1ge, y t e irresisti e temptation of
letting nothing be seized by the others. At Bruges again, the murderers
were able to take refuge and to barricade themselves in the church
because their pursuers, at the decisive moment, had been dazzled by
the prey which came into their view 'and ceased pursuing their
adversaries. "They had all returned to the loot and to pillaging,
searching here and there from the count's house to that of the
provost, from the dormitories to the canons' cloister ... hoping to
seize the count's treasure and the furniture of the houses located
 106 COMMENTARY
within the walls of the castle. From the count's house, they pulled out
T WAR
several mattresses, linen, goblets, caldrons, chains, iron bars, ties, gut
cords, iron articles used in the prisons, the iron door of the count's
treasure chamber, the lead gutters in which the roof water was
collected. They took away everything, believing that they could do it
without committing any fault. I will not even go into the infinitely
large quantity of wheat, meat, wine, and beer that they pillaged from
the cellar of the count, the provost, and the canons. In the canons'
dormitory, which was filled with very valuable clothing, they took so
much booty that they did not cease, from the time of entry into the
castle till nightfall, to come and go to carry it away." These prizes
were less significant than they might appear in a world suffering so
much from want and gripped by hunger or the fear of hunger, where
metal and cloth were such rare things, where coins were hidden so
cleverly. In a universe of penury, all things are good for the taking;
war empties everything and makes peasants run away into the woods
and marshlands or inside town walls. The most sacred places seem to
r make the best asylums. People rush into churches. One of these
t sheltered for several days the murderers of Charles the Good. We see
those churches cluttered, as soon as the enemy nears, with baskets
and bags, with all the tools of the terrified rustics, becoming as "the
stores of the people deprived of a just defense." In the heat of the
hunt, it sometimes happens that bunches of these wretches, unable to
run any further, hang onto the crosses at the crossroads: then, should
their pursuers be God-fearing warriors instead of routiers, they are
saved. However, in war, as i~the to_~!~J!.~..tb.~..Q.~..t..p.tq..is.stil}..the
knight fr~~~lde.
-This-prey must be seized, and thus unhorsed, before he can reach
his retreat, one of the many castles, great or small, which serve as so
many refuges. The lance is tried, but it breaks quickly. More efficient
are the iron hooks which pull men down from their horses and which
are wielded by foot soldiers. These, however, can only act if the
adversary is surrounded. A pack runs the enemy as if he were a stag,
But care is taken not to slay him because he is valuable only if alive.
Knights very seldom kill each other in war, perhaps even less than-in
the excitement of the tourneys which are games where passion can
make a man lose all self-control. Here again, death is an accident, a
dreadful one for several reasons. First of all, because it makes the
hatred between the two parties more bitter and heightens grief. One
day in Normandy, thirteen knights were chasing another, "they were
doing their best to take him alive"; but in the rush, the fugitive was
accidentally hit by the blow of a lance and "to the great sorrow of those
who had hit him, the knight died that very same day." The great lord
)
on whose behalf the chase had been conducted felt indeed that "his
107
men had committed a serious fault and that this murder would bring
heavy calamities on his land"; he "stopped nascent rancor" by
making the peace very quickly with the nephews of the victim
"because of fear that from the roots of a bad deed would arise many
troubles and that these, being ceaselessly reborn from the pestilence,
wo lead everyday to more and more condemnable action."
Such is war in the twelfth century. No one thinks that murder is
more legitimate in war than in time of peace, nor that the
onsequence of such a murder would be any the less. This explains
the extreme rarity of these unhappy misfortunes. After the murder of
Count Charles in 1127, war lasted for over a year in the county of
Flanders and caused more than 1,000 knights to engage each other.
Galbert of Bruges gives an extremely detailed account of it, a series of
daily notes. He was located in the midst of the event, was very lucid,
and knew how to count. He states that altogether there were seven
deaths, Two of these victims were not knights: one was killed by an
arrow, the other by the sudden closing of the lid of a trunk he was in
the process of looting. Of the five noble combatants, only one died
from an enemy blow during a chase. The death of the four others was
accidental: one nasty fall from a horse, one missed step during a wall
climb, the caving in of a ceiling, too much ardor in blowing a horn
which caused an old wound to reopen. At the most heated moment of
the whole war, in the final assault on the collegiate of Bruges, which
Galbert witnessed with his own eyes, "by special grace of God no one
died in this multitude which was entering." When the author of the
account uses the word "carnage," he explains: "I could not begin to
describe the crowd of those who were hit and wounded." But not
killed: although the shooting of mercenary archers is feared, it is
again not because it kills but because it severely wounds poorly
equipped foot soldiers; "as to those wearing an armor, they were
exempted from wounds but not from bruises; they were fleeing
terrified." Protected by the best equipment, chivalry remains cautious
and runs away at the appropriate moment. It comes back from the
war covered with wounds and mostly with swellings. But it does
come back.
The knight comes back home because war is a hunt, conducted by
experienced people, in control of themselves, well protected, who, if
their enemy is a good Christian, do not dream of exterminating him
but rather of capturing him - so as to ransom him. Thus again: to
make money. Should the expedition be lucky and prey brought back,
they are sometimes put "in a bad prison" so that they hurry to find
the deniers which will buy them back. William of Breteuil thus found
 108 COMMENTARY
himself locked up for three months, and in winter his jailers exposed
him to the northern wind, clad only in a wet shirt. But this is
perceived as an unpleasant way to treat prisoners, a dishonorable
way. John Lackland, in Chinon, "treated his prisoners so badly that
those who were with him [on his side] became ashamed." The good
prince, in contrast, as exemplified by William Rufus, :'has th~i~ ~hains
removed, orders that they be given plenty to eat outside the jail III the
inner courtyard with his own people, and, on their word, leaves them
free after the meal," just as is done in the evening following a tourney.
And when his people worry that the captives will escape, he grows
angry and reproaches them: "I will not consider the idea that a good
knight would break his word; if he did so he would be despicable, a
man without law." Chivalry, indeed, is a fine company whose
members respect convention, at least when the expedition is over,
when all are sure of their prizes, when the pledges have all been
handed over. Otherwise, no one wants to let go of the profits.
This concern shortens every expedition. In bands, assembled into
conrois behind a banner, or, if the leader in charge of the adventure is
of some power, in a large gathering of banners and companies, the
knights have entered the hunting ground, invaded the land of the lord
who, they are told, must be forced to accept peace. They press
forward, lightly armed, riding palfreys and preceded by scouts who
flush out and drive out the prey. These scouts know the terrain better
than one would think as these hunters, who never remain in the same
place for long, are always on the move in a~l areas; they know how. to
orient themselves and keep exact memones of markers and trails,
Knowing the best itineraries, they choose the good paths, the old
Roman roads which have been more or less kept up and which the
L loot-laden wagons will be able to take on the return journey. Each
heavy knight is followed by the war-horse, which will be fresh when
he decides to climb on it at the last minute to attack, pursue or flee as
fast as possible, by the boy who will help him put on the main part of
his armor and by a pack horse loaded with the baggage. The foot
soldiers walk at the side, in the dirt. This cavalcade is on constant look-
out. Along the way they pillage, they destroy the peasants' humble
treasures. They seek out the enemy, they follow his trail. He hides if
he is not in strength and sets up ambushes. What is required is to
surprise him, to track him, to assault him in a lively melee, and to try
as much as possible to capture him. The advance is cautious, and the
more so if it has proven to be profitable, with the loot becoming heavier
and more precious. No one lightly risks what he already holds. War is
not a tournament: it is a business. In the course of it, nothing is risked
for glory. Everyone avoids excess and, when the harvest has been
WAR 109
good, is generally in a hurry to go home. As soon as the quarry makes
itself scarce, or more stubborn, or dangerous to the hunters, the latter
quite shamelessly turn around and go back. They take the shortest
way, avoiding any obstacle, through the safest roads, with full
wagons and with hordes of captured horses and prisoners.
Th!§.~~p.Augus.tL!Ul?ehavioron the eve of Bouvines. It was
the same as that of every one oTIi'iS·KHigIya:i:iCestors.t=re-haa...&9.r.H~~JO
-ee-re@1y:.'if~y~~!i~~mo·re;t1ineIgfi101'y-01'ateloiiloli's vassal. He
knew the adversary to be-lri"sffeiigtn~'Si1rf6iiilaed'byarlies;ready to
attack. Neither he nor his barons intend to put themselves in too great
a danger. As soon as they feel themselves to be in a somewhat perilous
position, they decide to retreat, like the prudent men they are. Very
early on the morning of July 27, in the dew of dawn, after having left
Tournai, the host goes to shelter behind the marshes of the Marcq -
before the sun rises and heats up their armor. But they proceed in an
orderly manner. The French King's army, hounded for so long by
Richard the Lionheart's men, made "very wise," has become used to
retreat. It proceeds in tight ranks, in battalions. The most lumbering,
the most precious part, the wagons with the Oriflamme have been put
in front surrounded by the foot soldiers from the communes. A solid
corps is placed in the rear to fend off surprise attacks, and light-armed
observers watch from afar the other troop's movements.
The latter will seize the opportunity: it is in -the retreat that armed
bands are the most vulnerable. In its turn, it becomes the hunter,
presses the adversary, follows it, enters right on its heels into the
Capetian lands so as to avenge itself by ravaging them, compensating
itself at the same time, so as to return afterward in a movement
similar to that of their enemies, laden with the spoils of plunder. But
who knows? There are those who tell the Emperor and the counts
that the French are frightened - which is true - that they, are
retreating in disorder - which is false. Has not the moment come to
bring the matter to a close, to truly earn the money that King John is
having distributed? The ethic of the honest mercenary who feels that
it is dishonorable to serve poorly the one who pays him well is given
voice through the mouth of Hugh of Boves, the pay distributor. In
contrast, Renaud of Darnmartin advocates caution, as a fighter with
long years of experience and who knows that the men of Ile-de-
France - he is one of them - do not flee nor disband when retreating.
And yet, the temptation of a superb bounty, the fire of old grudges,
the hostility between countries, of the Fleming against the people of
Artois and of Picardy, reveal themselves to be strongest and open up
the way for temerity. It is decided that, on this Sunday, everything
will be ventured. The Emperor and his allies have chosen the battle.

The Battle
/ .. adversarie.s fought it out, first on horseback, then, after the mounts
The battle is not war. I would even go so far as to say that it is its
, ,I reverse: the battle is a proce"d'lireOf peace. Wemi was a seasoii:i1
'1 adventure, an enterprise of depredation, a sort of regular and bold
harvesting. Conducted much as a cautious farmer works, it warily
unfolded under any pretext and took its natural place in a hunting
c' .. . in the midst of the web of continually ret<j.n.dkd:::1luarr~s
endlessly opposing rival powers who shared the same rapaciousness.
In this permanent debate, war was an argument amongst others; it
was made use of much like, in other instances, the exchange 'of
women of rival lineages through marriage. Thus, in the course of the
conflict pitting Philip Augustus and Renaud of Dammartin against
.,I
each other for so long, we see violent confrontations alternating with
I"
~ betrothal feasts. Harassment, show of anger, war was also bravado, a
sudden strike made in the hope of weakening resistance, of grabbing
hold of something, of securing a pledge. It only ever appeared as a
prelude to less violent encounters, where the antagonists, having laid
down their arms, surrounded by their kindred and their clients, came
to speak, to yell, to curse, to haggle, to submit their case to
arbitration, to agree to this, to that, to let go of a little, to hang on to
almost everything, to demand more, finally to embrace, to eat and
drink together, to listen to liturgies, and, for a moment, to set aside
the hatreds always ready to spring up again. War slid through the
i interstices of a network of constant discussion, of which it was always
a preparation or a sequel - whic Iso explains the concern to av .
killing. This, because war never resolve anything. The resolution
'c:rrne from words, from the exchanges of oaths following the plaid.
Pillaging expeditions were barely more than skirmishes, interrupting
the parlements' for a while.
i Translator's note: the modern meaning and translation of parlement is
THE BATTLE 111
I~ contr~st, th.e battle, the praelium, is set up at the very centre of a
pac~fic deliberation. It s~akes everything on a single blow. It is the
busme~s of elders, of ~entores, of sovereigns, a serious affair requiring
a modlCu~ ~f serernty. Occurring in the middle of plaid, it is an
~rdeal akin to those administered in front of the tribunals of that
time, a test, .a~ ~ltimate recourse to the judgment of God. Its role is to
force the Divinity ~o a declaration, to manifest its designs, to show
~nce and .tor all, Wit~ absolute clarity, uncontestably, on which side
lies the righteous claim. The battle, like the oracle, belongs to the
order of the sacred.
It is a duel. Judicial assemblies commonly made use of this
procedure when debate had reached a dead end and the case was
obscure. In acIosed saa; dehmited by a circle of onlookers-the two
became.disabled,. on foot, fighting with swords and then hand-to-
han~ withou: shields, punching each other's faces with their fists,
seeking ~pemngs for good holds round the underbelly, till one of the
t\~o admitted defeat. He was guilty. God had fought on the side of the
wmn~r; he had rendered his verdict. This verdict was sometimes quite
startling - and from the beginning of the twelfth century on with
the growt~ of logical thinking, some people began to question the
value of this sor: of test. Saint Bernard, surprisingly in agreement with
Abelar~, a~d hIS effort to distinguish the intention from the act,
wro:e:. It 1S not .by the result but by the feelings of the heart that a
Christian shoul? Judge the danger he faced in a war and the victory he
won. Because, If the cause he defends is good the issue of the war
regardless. of what it might be, could not be a' bad one. Likewise, i~
the end, ~Ictor~ could not be good when the cause for the war is not
and the. mtennon of th.ose who wage it is not righteous." These
reservations, however, d.id not result in restriction of the use of single
combat. The greatest pnnces had no qualms about posing it as a last
resort to those who' contested their authority. Thus the Count of
Flanders, William Cliton, responded to the spokesman of his real
competitor, the .body of knights of the land: "I am willing to put
myself on par With you and to prove against you and without delay
~hr~ug~ a combat, that I have so far led the county with ability and
Ju~tI~e. Thus Helie, Count. of Maine, then a Crusader, proposed to
Wilham Rufus, who was trying to take away his inheritance a duel in
th~ name of Ch.rist. And in the parlement of Gisors in 1188 where
pride was keeping Henry II and Philip Augustus from agreeing to
:'parliament," but the approximate literal translation of the Old French term
m Duby's text would be "speaking session" or "speaking event."
 i 112 COMMENTARY
peace terms, a baron came up with the idea of choosing four knights
1 from both sides "To defend and to prove / And the winner takes all?"
When war drags on and there is no hope for a successful parley,
one thus very naturally considers the ordeal of the duel, particularly
, l when the matter is important, when the contested object is a
collection of sovereign rights. But when princes accept recourse to
this procedure, they are usually reluctant to measure themselves in
single combat. They prefer to bring their friends along, the whole of
their force. The duel, made immeasurably larger, then becomes the
battle. But it does not change its nature. Kings appear in it with, at
their sides, pawns, knights, castles, as in chess, and the outcome of the
game depends on the moves of all these pieces. These moves,
however, have only one object: to checkmate one of the two kings. It
is pursued till this objective is reached. But it ends on this last move -
irremediably. This is the case at Bouvines. On which side is
righteousness? On the side of the Pope, that is, of Philip Augustus?
On the side of the one who has promulgated the, excommunications,
who has disinherited John Lackland? Or on the other? God will tell.
Then everything will tip over to one side. To choose battle means
taking the chance of losing everything. Perhaps even to be killed. The
intent to kill is present in the closed field, in the judicial duel, as well
as on the field of battle, but it is aimed at only one of the combatants,
the opposing leader. This can be clearly seen in the Bayeux Tapestry:
it is Harold whom Duke William's companions are intent on
pursuing and who must succumb. This is because divine anger, which
the battle aims to bring out, is terrible; it reaches down to the deepest
roots of the conflict so as to pull them out and extinguish the quarrel;
it will even go so far, if necessary, as to eliminate one of the
contestants. This explains the rumors that spread and grew on the
morrow of Bouvines and which the chroniclers recorded. Philip
Augustus - this tall tale is enormous - would have promised Orleans,
his good and loyal town, to Otto! The conspirators would have
already parceled out the kingdom amongst themselves - which is
~
SSi ble . They would have sworn to kill the King - which is likely.
T~nce between the b.?t.E!.~d the cautious skirmi . ~r
is marked by this search for the abSO me, a searc leading mto
another territory - one of gr~vity a~d of a litur~y of fate. It is a
province that no one ventures into without trembling,
This is why battles are so rare. At the end of the eleventh century,
FoUlque the Rechin, Count of Anjou, wrote down what he knew of
his ancestors and their prowess. In four generations, only six battles
were fought by these very great lords. Geoffrey Grisegonelle, who
died in 987, vanquished the Count of Poitiers in the first of these.
THE BATTLE 113
Foulque Nerra, who died in 1040, killed the Count of the Bretons in
the second and routed the Count of Blois in the third. The hero of the
next two battles is Geoffrey Marte! who captured the Count of Mans
and then the Count of Poitiers. Foulque the Rechin himself took his
brother "in battle," which brought him the uncontested possession of
the countal honor. The combats, as we have seen, end either with the
death of the adversary or with his capture-or rout. They oppose men
of equal rank, peers, a count with another count, a king with another
king, and the stake of the competition is always sovereign power over
a principality. Battles are spoken of as praiseworthy enterprises which
add to the glory of a dynasty, and without the reservations voiced
over war. War can indeed be pernicious; the war Geoffrey Marte!led
against his father engendered "much evil for which he was to repent
bitterly later on." Battle, however, is never so, but on the contrary it is
a kind of remedy applied to war when it worsens. A drastic remedy
which immediately cures the people: the war of this same Geoffrey
against Thibaut of Blois "worsened so much that they engaged in a
battle" after which everything was resolved.
Only three battles occurred in the land of Flanders in the course of
a century and a half: at Cassel in 1071, at Axpoel in 1128, and finally
at Bouvines. On his deathbed William the Conqueror decides to
dispense advice on "the maintenance of faith and justice, on the
respect of the law of God and of peace." He tells the story of his life:
"Already in childhood," he says, "I was immersed in the craft of arms
and I have polluted myself by spilling much blood." At Val-des-
Dunes first, and then at Hastings, he went to battle and won with the
help of God. Two battles - that is all. He also fought against the men
of the King of France, but the latter was not present: thus no duel and
no battle. Before Bouvines, the Capetians had only ever fought a
single battle, at Bremule m 1119 a ainst another kin Hem of
En~ an . ors avoided running
tEe riSk...again. Consequently, battles made up only a few dates on the
tight weft of incessant feudal warfare. But these are dates that matter,
those of decisive events; and they are surrounded with a supernatural
aura as they are manifestations of God's will. .
Opening onto the sacred, the battle is ordered into liturgy. Like the
ordeal, the judicial duel, it requires its "field," whence the specific
expression designating it: praelium campestre, "battle champel" as
the gestes translate it. "Champions" confront each other on a
campus; one of them must perish, run away in shame, or beg for
mercy. ~re, .there are no surprises or ambushes but a long riqpl
preparation .. as .befits the_ apELoach ,of a sacrament. The two
adversaries are about to present themselves in front of the tribunal of
114 COMMENTARY
the Lord. They must first of all pray, proclaim their righteous
intention before the face of the Eternal, and promise to redeem their
past faults. On the field of Tinchebray, in 1106, Henry, son of the
Conqueror, is getting ready; facing him is his brother, Robert
Courteheuse; the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of England
are the stake. Henry speaks out his justificatory and propitiatory
oration, pleading on his own behalf: "I am only marching to battle to
help the desolate people; I beg the Creator of all things, from the
bottom of my heart, that, in today's battle, he grants victory to the
one whom he has chosen to give his people protection and rest." Then
comes the promise to repair the worst fault committed against the
peace of God, that is, to rebuild a church burned during the war of
which this battle is the result, and to free all those captured in this
sanctuary. Purification, preliminary blessing, with which are associated
all the knights accompanying the champion.
On the morning of June 20, 1128, at Axpoel, before confronting
Thierry of Alsace who is contesting his possession of the county of
Flanders, William Cliton decides to "die rather than suffer such a
great shame." He devotedly goes to confess his sins to the Abbot of
Oudenberg, to receive absolution, and to solemnly promise to be
thenceforth a loyal protector of the churches and the poor, to
properly fulfill the princely function. The whole of the chivalry is then
invited to make similar commitments, that is, to renew their peace
oaths. Then all the knights don the cloak of penance; they cut their
long hair, the visible sign of depravity on which councils also
pronounced anathemas: "they shed their ordinary clothes, keeping
only the shirt and the hauberk." It is thus that they go ad bellum, as in
a procession "humbly devoted to God and moved by the greatest of
zeal." They adopt the very posture of the pilgrims of peace, and with
uniforms and attitudes from the Crusades. They are supported from
afar by the bishops who have excommunicated those on the other
side. It is quite clear: even in the very gestures initiating it, the battle is
meant to be a ceremonial of {Jeace.
To these penitential rites are added princes' declarations, leaders'
harangues to their troops so as to lift up their hearts once more. They
all follow the same theme. The Conqueror's discourse on the field of
Hastings was to be directly echoed by the speech made at Lincoln in
1217, not by King Henry Ill, who was then a young child, but by the
leader who was taking his place and spoke in his name, William the
Marshal. The warriors for the good cause, and to whom victory was
promised, were told: if we die, God will take us to His Paradise; if we
win, it will bring glory to us and our lineage; the enemies will go to
hell, heaven has put them in our power. We will fight to defend
THE BATTLE 115
ourselves, to conquer the highest honor, to protect the Holy Church
which the adversary wickedly attacks, for the forgiveness of our sins
(in fact; for those God will crown, the battle counts as a Crusade, it is
worth an indulgence), and finally to avenge ourselves on those who
have come to despoil us. A touch of profane intonation emerges here
and there in the call to glory, to honor, to the central values of
knightly ethics, but in a light vibrato, over a theme which in its
entirely is a proclamation of justice, a reference to the tuitio, the ultio,
to the good fight justified by the impious violence which comes from
the adversary, the side of the excommunicated, the violators of divine
peace.
Thus purified, comforted, the troops are arranged in a ritual order
w.bldi IS al:w:a¥s trinit.aUa:n. On each siae fhere aret1.'ire'e'C~~
battalions, and each of the two duelists positions himself in the
middle of the central formation. Then comes a long silence, during
which happiness slowly descends on the two armies, absolved,
blessed, self-assured, on all the silent knights, tensed, elated because
they are about to become so many Saint Georges. The horns sound
the opening move. the game begi.nsJt...ronsists mtjI£~o
enable the tw.D.-Qlampions to..approacb.....each...at.h.e.r..~
~r. All the currents of the melee circle around the central point,
they circumscribe it, trying to define it. This is the very heart of the
field from which the light will burst forth when the two adversaries
succeed in exchanging blows. In truth, each of them is wedged in his
own conroi; no matter how violent his hatred, he has trouble
extricating himself from this envelope. The blows he receives do not
come from the other duelist but from the servants preparing his
advance and protecting his retreat. This is because in order to strike
or to seize the one whom he has come to confront, each of the two
adversaries uses hands other than his own, those of the knights of his
house.
People wonder if it is not sacrilegious for these auxiliary hands to
attack the body of a king. At Bremule, one of Louis VI's comrades
tried to capture Henry I whom "he hated a lot"; he hit the king's
helmet to stun him but he came close to being torn to pieces because
"it was a criminal enterprise to raise the arm so as to hit with a sword
a head anointed with the holy oil through the offices of a bishop." In
truth, few are the battles where the two rivals succeed in taking a
close look at each other, even rarer those where they can touch each
other. Generally, one of the two runs away before this can happen,
as soon as God's choice becomes clear. The usual outcome, just as in
the tournament, is a rout as the flight of one of the champions
immediately triggers the disbanding of the central corps, the
116 COMMENTARY
cornerstone of the whole military deployment. This is how Louis VI
T THE BATILE
behaved at Bremule. Henry I did not succeed in catching him and had
to content himself with the royal banner which had been seized by a
foot soldier and which he bought for twenty marks of silver and kept
"as sign of the victory God had given him."
But as soon as the enemy takes flight, he becomes quarry, a prey
one tries to capture alive. The threat of death only rests on a single
person, that of the leader. In battle, as in war, killing ia.n.o.t...a,n.a.im. At
Bremule, 900 knights fought each other: "I have discovered," reports
Orderic Vital, "that there were only three killed as they were covered
with iron and reciprocally spared each other, as much on account of
the fear of God as the fraternity of arms; they tried much less to kill
those in flight than to capture them. It is true that as Christians these
knights did not thirst after their brothers' blood and they were proud,
in a loyal triumph granted to them by God himself, to fight for the
benefit of the Holy Church and the rest of the faithful." The battle, I
repeat, is a judicial cneration. Amongst Christians, it never takes the
form of an enterprise of extermination. As in a plaid, the aim is not
the destruction ofthe opponent. It is a debate, one that is closed with
a judgment. . were still in a state 0 war, involved in the adventures of a hunt.
And yet, as in the plaid, the party found guilty must accept the
sentence. In his camp, there is astonishment, disappointment as he
too has come, along with all his men, sure of his right. It is precisely
for this reason that the battle has been engaged, because no
conviction imposed itself, because each cause seemed as just as the
other, and thus the anathemas pronounced by the other side seem.ed
legitimate. Each side had offered the same prayers to heaven .with
equal confidence. Thus the judgment of God plunges the vanquished
into confusion. What have they done to deserve this punishment? Is
any new recourse, any new attempt to return into grace doomed?
"Having learned that, before the battle ofAxpoel, Count William had
humbly submitted to God, that he had made use of the remedy of
penance and that, with all his men, he .had cut his hair. and shed
superfluous clothing," the adversaries he had defeated decided to do
likewise to shear their heads and to rip their clothes. In turn their
own priests preached a universal fast, promenaded crosses and relics
around, even ventured to excommunicate the winners. These
obstinate people were wrong: the proof had been given. To continue
the fight in another form by exchanging those anathemas which, in
the words of Galbert of Bruges, "joust with each other," to thus
transfer the battle into the realm of the invisible was ridiculous; more
than that, it was sacrilegious. Such stubbornness was bound to
irritate heaven, to bring about new misfortunes. "The crosses and the
processions led from church to church could only provoke the anger
117
of God and could not conciliate Him as they showed an obstinacy
of the soul to evil; they went against a power manifested by God
Himself."
Indeed, the good Christian must acce battle is
jecls·ve. IS a stream 0 Ig t ispersing the darkness, opening t e
eyes, putting a close to any hesitation; it is an edict that comes down
with no appeal. It brings back order for a "'{kry long time, and .mark~
the end of one era Md the be~inni.IJg of annrher. When night falls over
the field, everyone knows that the next dawn will be that of a new
spring of the world. Such is the morrow of Tinchebray: "The two
brothers fought a single time against one and another, so that
thenceforth would cease the discords which every day poured blood
over the earth. Through a just sentence of God Himself, the victory
was granted to the friend of peace and justice, and his adversaries
were swept away."
Bouvines was one of these exceptional ceremonies whose rites had
been established a long time previously. Thus everything unfolded in
it accordin to the rules. At the start of the mornmg, me participants
Otto's army was the one conducting it. The scouts, the Viscount of
Melun, Brother Guerin, had thus discovered it from afar, approaching in
combat formation. If we are to believe the Anonymous of Bethune,
the chronicler of Marchiennes, and the author of the Vita Odiliae
this troop seemed already driven by covetousness; it hurried "like ~
pack of rabid dogs forcing a prey," and in its haste, it was less
cohesive and tended to disorder. Was it already seeking the battle, the
decisive test which would allow success in one blow, "to.reduce to
nothing the royal dignity," as the conspirators "in their insatiable
hatred" had promised themselves? The Relatio Marchianensis seems
to lead us in this direction. Does it not state that the enemies of Philip
Augustus had already prepared themselves for the ordeal, had
"sacralized" themselves; that they had put "on the front and back of
their coats of arms small signs of the cross" so as to take on the
appearance of a peace cohort, penitent and 'carrying out God's
vengeance, in order to bring supernatural powers to their aid? They
had disguised themselves as crusaders. But perhaps this was only
done so that they could recognize each other, as a precautionary
measure? Perhaps they were still only thinking, in the alternating
moves .of the war, to take advantage of the adversary's retreat in
difficult terrain and grab what they could from the rearguard of the
royal caravan?
Alerted, Philip stops, calls his council, as he is supposed to. No
 118 COMMENTARY
prince, at that time, takes alone any decision of some consequence for
his own power because it is that of all his friends as well. It is seemly
that these give their opinions, one after another, establish together the
terms of the statement their leader will finally voice and which will
commit them all. According to the Flandria generosa, Philip would
have proposed continuing the retreat and risking nothing that
morning: the enemy seemed superior in numbers, and most of all it
was Sunday, a day when Christians must not fight. Some held the
opposite view. Philip of Courtenay, a very close kinsman of the King
and one of the first to speak, is supposed to have acknowledged that it
is evil to spill human blood on a sacred day; but is it not true that the
one who does not initiate aggression, who only defends himself from
attack, commits a lesser sin: thus not to resist at the right time would
mean to accept defeat or to act foolishly. However, the Duke of
Burgundy is said to have advised avoiding this solemn test: there is
battle only if the two rivals come face to face; let Philip rely on his
barons and knights to make a stand in an engagement which, not
being a duel, could never appear as a decisive ordeal regardless of the
outcome. The encounter would then be nothing but one of the phases
of war. They would probably lose a few feathers, but they would not
lose everything. The King should thus retreat to a shelter, the castle
of Lens. One fact is certain: the King's council decided to retreat.
Only as a ruse, as claimed by the Vita Odiliae, so as to entice the
adversary onto chosen terrain: "For the honor of the holy day,"
postponing the battle till the morrow - the reason given by the
Anonymous of Bethune? Because, the "very wise" Philip, according
to the account of Marchiennes, would have seen the danger run by his
host and, "prudent and discreet," wanted to avoid the spilling of
blood? This last reason seems to have been the more important: the
bridge of Bouvines was very near, and beyond it the servants had
begun to put up the tents. The King's army thus took to the road
again, with all speed. Most of it crossed the river. Tired - he was not a
young man any more - Philip stops in the shade, sheds his arms,
makes himself comfortable - the night stop is near; he refreshes
J himself by eating bread that he dips in a bowl of wine.
At this precise momentjr...!~~~!l~~n.deJ:.....D.lL.
t cimIfustances wantstOP'Os.!£2.!l~..tlu:.. battle..till•.t1Hr~--day." This is
t whatBrot1ref"Cuenn, riCfing in at full speed, comes to announce. The
action has already begun with an attack on the rearguard which is
holding out, but with difficulty. The Duke of Burgundy calls for
reinforcements. Avoidance is not possible any more: Philip could not
keep on retreating "without dishonar:-FIemust "put his faith into
th~ Lord. " And he thus dons his -armor again, and, before anything
THE BATTLE 119
else, enters a neighboring church - providentially dedicated to Saint
Peter, the patron of Rome, the one to whom the Pope, whom they
make some claim to fight for, is the successor. He says a, prayer. A
short one, states the Anonymous, "with a contrite heart," says the
Relatio Marchianensis; Flandria generosa adds "all in tears." They
will not waver anymore. The Count of Boulogne is claimed to have
said to Otto, surprised to see the quarry face up to the pack which
was forcing it - and it is a Flemish chronicler narrating this - that
"the custom of the people of France is never to flee but to die or win
in battle." It is true, though, that the people of France were not used
to fighting battles. But they were supposed to be the best tourneyers in
the world. In any case, at the moment when King Philip has the call
sounded for all to assemble, war comes to an end. The battle begins.
Thenceforth, all haste, agitation, and disorder cease. There is a
respite. It is a measured prelude, one befitting the organization of the
ceremony. Its "field" is defined: it will be the large fields of Cysoing.
Face to face, at a short distance so as to be able to see each other
clearly, but far enough away so that charges can unfold and build.up
all their power, on a single line 3,000 paces long, the two armies
range. themselves into the required layout. Three "echelons," three
"barralions" on each side, "in honor," specifies the Vita Odiliae "of
the divine Trinity." At the center, the two captains have established
their statio, their hotel, in the master square of the chessboard. The
time has come for them to erect their symbols, their emblems; the
Oriflamme was far to the front with the baggage; it is called back in
haste; on the other side, on a chariot akin to the one the Milanese had
once captured, stands the eagle of the empire and the dragon which
William the Breton makes the obvious symbol of the adversaries'
wickedness: "Both sides stopped for a long time and put their affairs
in order."
It is then that Philip Augustus makes the final harangue. Its content
is reported differently by the witnesses. William states that it is short:
the king simply puts himself into God's hands, reminds his listeners
that excommunication weighs heavy 'on the opposing side, the side of
money, of the persecutors of the Holy Church, and the oppressors of
the poor. However, there is no arrogance here: "we too are sinners";
but at least we are in accordance with the prelates whose freedoms we
protect; thus we will win. Flandria generosa repeats approximately
the same thing: the King cannot be accused of breaching the rules of
the peace of God; it is despite him that they are fighting on a Sunday,
on a day on which focuses the interdiction which is the basis for
the truce of God; Otto is excommunicated by the Pope, the Count
of Boulogne is a traitor and excommunicated as well, the Count of
L
 120 COMMENTARY

Flanders is a felon and a perjurer. There is no need to worry: they are

already condemned. Their crimes will put them into the hands of the
-.1$illg -n1 FMQce::;r--etse=WtfF=GaUSe... thei.Ll.2~t. Accordingrothls
narrative, the King would, moreover, have stated his intention of
risking everything, even his life, not to flee, to remain with the last
of his men on the field of battle to win or die - just like a Roland. In
the Vita OdiLiae, the speeches show less assuredness: the retreat is
not pursued beyond the stream because it is not possible; they are
thus forced to fight "for the French crown"; let them all overcome
their fear, this anxiety which is perfectly natural as the enemy seems
so fearsome. No matter how weak they are, they can only hope for
the victory God gives to those He loves. For additional safeguard, the
King invokes Saint Lambert of Liege who, as we have seen, had the
previous year miraculously freed his diocese from the barbarians.
According to the chronicler ofMarchiennes, Philip would "humbly,
modestly and [again] with tears in his eyes" mostly have made appeal Plate 1 Jousting knights: relief on the cathedral of Angoulerne
to the spirit of lineage: let the noble men of the host remember their (around 1130)
ancestors; never have these retreated; they must resist so as to protect
their family patrimony from permanent damage. After thi's proclama-
tion, with the right hand raised in a sacerdotal posture, in the stance
that on the tympana of cathedrals is the very stance of Christ, the
,

i I
anointed of the Lord then calls the blessing of heaven down on all his
men, and, adds the Flandria generosa, exhorts them to confess their
sins so as to bring about victory. All these gestures signify entry into
sacred time. Plate 2 Knights confronting each
Then, in the heat of noon, the solemn silence is broken. Behind the other: capital of the column of
Brioude (middle of twelfth century)
King of France, just as during the office, two clerks begin a psalmody.
This will go on throughout the fighting, to be interrupted only by sobs
of emotion or the sound ofan exclamatory prayer: let God not forget
that His Church has only one protector, Philip; it is oppressed by
Otto, despoiled by John Lackland. The person of the sovereign and
this crown which is the stake of the game are then as if held tight
within the rising incantations, within Israel's ancient appeal to the
God of armies: psalms, and well-chosen ones: "Blessed is the Lord,
my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle... He
who puts nations under my feet" (Psalm 114, verses 1, 2); "God
arises and His enemies are scattered; those who hate Him flee before
him, driven away like smoke in the wind; like wax .melting at the fire,
the wicked perish at the presence of God" (Psalm 68; verses 1, 2);
"The king rejoices in thy might, 0 Lord: well may he exult in victory,
for Thou has given him his heart's desire and has not refused him
what he asked .... Your hand shall reach all Your enemies.... For
they have aimed wicked blows at You, they have plotted mischief but
 ~Xrll[rVNT lAP
IILi RI •
••

Plate 3 Thirteenth-century helmet

Plate 6 Miniature from the Winchester Bible

Plate 4 Seal of King Louis VII Plate 5 Seal of Raymond of Toulouse
(1156-1222)
 1

Plate 7 Battle: Miniature from the Aeneid belonging to Heinrich V

(c.1220)

Plate 9 Courting and war scenes: marriage chest, treasury of Vannes Cathedral
(beginning of the thirteenth century)

Plate 8 Melee between Crusaders and Saracens at Damietta: miniature from the Mathieu
Chronicles, Paris (middle of the thirteenth century)

I1
l
 iQS

11
"
~

~.

I
I
,l ;
!

Plate 11 Crown said to be that of Saint Louis

Plate 10 Warrior receiving the Oriflamme from the hands of Saint Denis: stained glass (c.1260)
window from the cathedral of Chartres

~
If
 Plate 12 "Bataille de Bouvines" by Horace Vernet, 1824

j
I I
II
I
,
. I
I

I.
t I

,
, !
. f
i
I I
Plate 13 Sacralization of the battle: sketch for the stained glass windows of Plate 14 The victory parade: sketch for the stained glass windows of Bouvines
Bouvines
 THE BATTLE 121
could not prevail; but You will catch them round the shoulders and
will aim Your bow-strings at their face" (Psalm 21, verses 1, 8, 11,
12).2 With these songs of hope, and in the clamor of insults and
horns, the duel begins.

(ir\,\\". [k. - Bat.alf le de Bouvf nes.

. from a book on French history: "Battle of

Plate 15 Il1ustranon
Bouvines"

PHIUPPE-AGG GSTr:

En 1214, le rcr de France rhilippe.·Augtt~lr.

attaqee ~ hi fUl~ pal It'" mi ,fAngIC'ltrl"f' l>.'u
I (>lllpi~r-t'UI lr~\Jkma~m:'
e! par It' Htllllf' (le-
FJ<lII(h" nwrt 11... .l It'rt.t h-Il('nnlfi' .. lu l('lt-
,runt' .ifllh'1' t'omptJ'>ef' III ('hf'l'uh,:r<c (>1 de'
nHfl('('~ j ph>,1 ,It'S Couunune

tl ..Hdsml Fennerm pres jiu p'»11 lI,

BVU\llH·....

Avunl dt' hvree batellle, il h"r.wgIJa M"o

ftUUl)(,,\ et dilaU:l Wl~nf'urllo ItUJ I ,'ttlour.Jt(·nt:
u \11 eH t-.l un plus dl:gnv que mol, 'lu'jj
l,rrthlt' la rourenne l '11
.\~Jh'" h-.. prodig~ de \UIf'Hr des lhf"'a!i.'h
fran".;u\ d d,... m~U(,,~(,oIllIlUIlUth"',. t'eunenu
fut I,utl,' CJ'I'it-ft" e1 It, 1'01 t1.'ntr,l IrlOUljih:l
1"Hh'lIt :\ l\ulii.. I'll rnenan I te Pltult th·
J-':lodrc pnscnmer,

2 Translator's note: Biblical quotes for the English translation are taken
from The New English Bible, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1972.

Plate 16 Cover of a school child's notebook: "Historical words." Museum of the ATP
---=--~- ---_.~-.~~- . ".'-~ --~ . .- ---_.. _---------"- -~_.~_._--------------
l VICTORY
Victory
Even though most of the authors of these narratives are men of
prayer, all of them show the battle in a particular light, that governed
by the ideology of the men of war. Not only do they direct all the
lighting on the knights but they also take pains ro veil that which.J.n
,the latter's behavior would appear to transgres~ule~of ethics
developed in tourna~s. In fact, for the Anonymous of Bethune, as
soon as the war ends, a noble and loyal game is inaugurated, an
admirable game of which all knowledgeable persons appreciate the
fine points, the well-executed charges. It is one that is meritorious,
deserving of the highest rewards: "the noble men who were there say
that they had never seen such fine tourneying." Effectively, Bouvines
is spoken about as if it had been a tournament. The most detailed
accounts only ever describe remarkable passages of arms, performances.
This because all the written traces of the event of July 27, 1214,
belong to a literature of sport aimed at a passionate public, at
aficionados. These accounts celebrate records and stars, and attempt
to isolate them - and this is the very nature of the art of the reporter-
from the confusion into which, in true combat, the crisscrossing of a
thousand utilitarian and glamorless gestures has plunged them.
Rules of this type explain the way the texts speak of the
churchmen, like the two bishops, who were equipped for the game
and did not stay on the sidelines. They should not have given in to the
pleasures of the fight, particularly since they were in the camp of the
Whites. Yet they each participated in an essential phase of the meet,
and they each scored a decisive point. They each captured a most
important prisoner: Renaud of Boulogne surrendered to Guerin of
Senlis and William of Salisbury to Philip of Beauvais. These exploits
could not be kept silent. However, propriety requires the chroniclers
to express themselves on these amateur champions with prudence,
123
decency, and with respect for convention. Guerin is still only "elect";
William the Breton emphasizes that the fact that he has not yet been
anointed with the holy oil gives him some excuse for being there, as
does the fact of his belonging to the Order of the Temple: Templars
are m~n of battle. Yet the author explicitly states that "he is not there
to fight," that his behavior is one appropriate for an orator, for a
pastor charged with teaching the people, for a minister of the word:
Brother Guerin is in the midst of the columns to exhort the knights
(as, on the Bayeux Tapestry, does the Bishop Odo, the Conqueror's
brother), to spread the content of the royal harangue, to call everyone
to defend himself well, to give virile support to God, the Church, and
the people. As to the Bishop of Beauvais, William the Breton takes
pains, in his Philippiad, to state that he was there perchance and,
perchance as well, he happened to have a mace in his hands.
While the chroniclers give an important place to some men who,
despite the fact that they do not belong to the category of professional
players, possess the virtues and the sportsmanlike abilities of the
chivalry, they say nothing of most of the combatants. This silence is
that of scorn toward all foot soldiers. Of course, they are useful
instruments, though less valuable and less deserving of care than good
horses; moreover, they can be in the way. Then they are pushed aside,
trampled underfoot along with pieces of broken lance. At any rate,
the way they handle weapons is not deserving of the attention of
refined people: it is rather repulsive and causes blood to be spilled.
And if occasionally a spotlight is briefly projected onto one of these
abject participants, it is because the image serves as a foil to show off
noble prowess better. Thus was described the young man, acting like
a lad from the butchery trade, who tried to wound the fallen Renaud
of Dammartin by seeking his face and his underbelly with his knife.
He was a wolf which had penetrated into the sheepfold, inside the
park, the "fence" that a group of knights had set up around the
unfortunate hero who was their enemy yet their brother in valor, so
as to protect him from the ignominious range of the villeins, these
proletarians of war.
At the same time, narratives also leave in obscurity almost all the
knights because these are only supernumeraries. For knowledgeablej
fans any good account of a match must emphasize the memorable
blows, those which carry the decision and which rank the champions.
~e exce12tion_9f some outsiders. the or<lin~fY. team .~embers
w .~.heen..re.Yea1ed-t<rthe-tmhli.fJ:.hrol!,gh aE~tion9.I.exploit
on that dar..an4..xvho p.Jl_~~~_~~9den!y b~C:9.ID~J~mous ~~.t.?-_h<::I2ceforth
charge.more for their services, tIle only action really seen is that ot the
~n" whom, 'one'might be led to believe, conducted the whole
 124 COMMENTARY
business by themselves. They are the captains whose scores were
known to all and who have brought fame to their banners in
numerous tournaments. All eyes are on them: are they, on this
different terrain, going to live up to their reputations?
In the dust of the dog days that rises and obscures everything so
that they have trouble recognizing each other, their heads buzzing
under overheated helmets, their eyes blinded with sweat, these first-
class players intend to confront only their peers. As an expert of the
effective kind of war waged in the Holy Land against the Infidel,
Brother Guerin starts the battle by sending a corps of 200 mounted
sergeants against the Flemish echelon. They are the first to be put at
risk as their worth is smaller. Too bad if some of them are wasted.
Their charge is the initial blow which will sow disorder in the ranks of
the opposing knights. This tactic scandalizes the champions of
Flanders. They are infuriated: one does not joust against people of
this type. Thus we see them stay still: they wait so as to strike from
afar, to try killing the horses, to knock out, to stun. This time they do
not spare their blows: custom did not forbid slaying the adversary if
he was not noble. But the sergeants are well protected: only two of
them are killed in the charge. More powerful than the anger gripping
the pit of their stomach, than the desire to seize valuable equipment,
the sense of their own dignity has kept the knights from appearing to
truly measure themselves against men whose blood is worth less than
their own.
In fact, just as in the fine tourne~s, these chaf!l...2!9..ns are shown
dreammg only ~gk>!y, "oTperforming so many great deeds of arms
that they will be spoken about as far away as Syria." The cries that
the accounts of the battle put in their mouths only call on profane
values - to remember the ancestors, to serve the ladies well. It is to the
1 lineage and its glory, to the consort chosen for the pleasures of love,
that they dedicate their prowess, and they all take pains to make this
prowess highly visible. Their desire is to succeed in fighting "in open
field," away from the crowd, in full light, and in the most difficult as
well as the most noble game of mounted fencing. This is because the
passages of arms that will be spoken about will be the unhorsing, the
throwing to the mat of adversaries chosen from amongst the most
famous champions. As to the one who, in such attempt; misses the
mark and lets himself be thrown down, shame is on him. His price
goes down through such a fall unless he causes it to be immediately
forgotten by shining in another joust. This explains the Duke of
Burgundy's rage; he is beside himself and yelling for another horse: he
is burning to immediately avenge his dishonor.
Yet the game must be played well and the emotion sufficiently
VICTORY 125
contained so that the rules are respected, particularly the one
forbidding the killing of a noble participant, with the exception of the
king of the opposite side in case of battle so as to render the judgment
of God more striking. When at the start of the engagement Eustache
of Malenghin yells out "Death to the French," all those who hear him
are disgusted, revolted by such impropriety. Right away, the knights
of Picardy seize the impertinent, they wound him. He is one of only
two knights said to have found death on the field of Bouvines, the
other being Stephen of Longchamp, accidentally struck by a knife
through the eye-hole of his helmet. All the other corpses were
furnished' by the lower orders.
Indeed, the main players do not die. They play well, loyally; even
themost wicked ones, even the Count of Boulogne. He is said to have
sworn on relics that he would go up to the King to kill him. He does
come very close, but upon seeing his face he becomes seized by respect
which overcomes his bad intention. He remembers just in time the
heroes of epics, the dishonor that can never be cleansed, the one
marking the man who raises his hand on his lord, the lord who has in
the past taken these hands into his own while receiving the solemn
promise that he would never endure any harm from them to his body
and to his limbs. Moreover, the personage that the Duke of Boulogne
has seen standing in front of him, within arm's length, is sacred. This
has given him even greater strength to turn away from him and to
transfer his rage onto an old enemy, Robert of Dreux. Such shows of
respect toward sworn loyalty and vassalic morality enable everything
else to be forgiven. This can be clearly seen when Philip Augustus
does Arnoul of Audenarde the honor of setting him free. The Duke of
Burgundy objects to the king letting go such a valuable prisoner, but
the king answers: "By the lance of Saint James I am welt aware of
this! But he never did like war [he is a man of peace, thus of God]; he
always advised his lord against it; he has never wanted to do homage
to the King of England when the others did so [he is not a turncoat];
and if he has done me wrong in order to serve his lord, I hold no ill
will toward him on that account."
In the eyes of the Anonymous of Bethune, the Bouvines melee is
encapsulated in these dazzling turns where no one is killed, in this
game of passes and thrusts in which a few scintillating heroes, for a
moment isolated in the arena, indulge. It is a race where they all
dream of winning the first prize, .showing that they would have
charged better than the others, gone through and through the
adversary echelons, unhorsing the knights in their path, and all this
within. the rules of the game and without any help. The Anonymous
provides something akin to a palmares of this competition, and
 126 COMMENTARY
celebrates, among others, the Castellan Arnoul who propelled
l VICTORY
himself, jostling through the troop of plebeian sergeants, reaching all
the way to the knights, taking aim at one of them, throwing him to
the ground, going past him carried by the impetus of the charge and
coming back "safe and sound to his own people, where he was much
praised." The people who produced accounts of the battle have all
expressed admiration for Gauthier, Count of Saint-Pol, more so than
for the courageous, the fearless, the reckless tourneyers of the best
tournaments. He well knew what was said behind his back, the
accusation of playing both sides; he wanted to defend his honor,
show his loyalty and, through this, to push himself, in everyone's
eyes, to the heights of valor. The whole army thus saw him openly
disregard gain, neglect all prey, so as to engage himself without a
second thought, to struggle till breathless, to go again before even
catching his breath and, in order to save a friend, to chance, if not
death, at least capture and ruin. Yet he was not a "youth" anymore,
like the Count of Bar who was also seized by immoderation and
risked his life in the midst of the routiers, these men who kill.
So that his valor be sung, the knight, even with his horse slain,
continues to fight on foot despite the weight of his arm or, and, when
all his weapons are broken, just as in the judicial duels he goes on
pounding on the hauberks with his arms or, like the Count of
Ponthieu, with his fists. But here, it is to win glory. To the amateurs,
the chroniclers of Bouvines tell of nothing else but a chain of
individual combats. Bursting with rage, the Duke of Burgundy, like a
new Ajax, has taken the coat of arms of the most famous player,
William des Barres; he gallops toward another tournament star, the
Sire of Audenarde. The latter swells with pride; the hero of the great
competitions has chosen him as opponent. A joust begins around
which, if we are to believe all these accounts, the other combatants
gathered, forgetting their grievances. Narratives of the battle all take
on the look of the Iliad. In them, we see the mighty of this world
measure themselves against each other, one to one and in honor.
And yet, the resplendent mantle that tournament ideology thus
throws over combat does not succeed in entirely masking some of the
aspects of a less glittering reality. First of all there is wavering of the
loyalty which was supposed to arm all hearts. The battle, this
solemnity, this liturgy, would have required a coherence, a unanimous
and seamless adhesion within each.camp, much more necessary here
than in war. Each of the blessed absolved corps of warriors was
1 the great crushed prey - which anyway has been done violence to and
expected to be purged of all duplicity, to vibrate in unison like the
plainsong of Benedictine psalmody. This is not the case. Despite
renewed and stronger oaths such as those the members of the
, .
coalition have sworn to each other, what do we see? In both camps,
127
even in the righteous one, loyalties are wavering. This is because each
party finds itself in reality internally split by the conflicting duties
imposed on most of their members. Indeed, almost all the warriors
recognize in the group facing them the colors of a father, a father-in-
law, a brother, a cousin, or a man whom they have, at some time in
the past, acknowledged as lord of their fief. All these are people that
they should, be serving and should love by natural right - or at least
they should forbid themselves from.striking. Thus, at each turn of the
tumult, we make out some sudden retreats, arms that drop down
unexpectedly, conversations being initiated. There is distrust even
within the conrois. It is this doubt that the Count of Saint-Pol senses
in his comrades and which he wants to destroy at any cost, screaming
to Brother Guerin that he-will give proof of his good faith and, for
that, will even put his own body in jeopardy.
But not all are like him. There is the Duke of Louvain, for instance,
who withdrew in the middle of the battle, to the chagrin of the
coalition. Furthermore, there is no perfect righteousness in the use of
weapons either. Forbidden blows rain down, and the knife, this
perfidious villein's tool, is wielded by the good knight Arnoul of
Audenarde himself who aims it at the openings in the helmet when
attacked by Eudes of Burgundy whom he takes for William des
Barres. To this we need to add that all the knights are far from being
as courageous as they are said to be. Most show as much prudence in
battle as they do in war, and are first of all concerned with surviving
in the best possible shape. We can see the frightened ones hiding
behind the others. Brother Guerin knows them well and, in the
sorting out he does prior to the opening of the game, he prudently
places the cowards in the second rank. To do this, it is necessary to be
discerning, not to let oneself be taken in by appearances: John of
Nesle is tall, strong, as handsome as a Saint George; yet he is
frightened. In the meet, he has avoided confronting anyone; when it is
over, we see him reappear. Fresh and on the look-out for loot, he
comes up to garner some crumbs of glory by quarreling over the
Count of Boulogne with those who have captured him. He is going to
have the upper hand because he is a more important man, and he is fresh.
At this point we also need to note that at this very moment, around
finally reduced by the foot soldiers and the sergeants, those blood-
hounds of war - there are several knights engaged in a full-blown
free-for-all, each trying to seize the. prize by force for himself alone.
In truth, in the quest for glory, the taste for gain is not as subdued
as the chroniclers would have us believe. Each band conducts its own
 128 COMMENTARY
hunt, tracks the game it has flushed, and is primarily concerned with
capturing it. The greed motivating it is of course kept in check by
collective discipline, which was probably much less loose than
historians often believe, as well as by clear awareness of the gravity of
the day's events. But we sense rapaciousness ready to liberate itself at
any time the bridle is relaxed a little. Moreover, all the knights have
come, as in tournaments, with the intention of going home richer and
thus of laying their hands on anything they can. In the course of these
melees, deals are struck, winners and losers haggle over ransoms, and
whoever is able to give a good pledge can obtain from his "master,"
just as is the custom in the midst of tournament melees, permission to
get back in the saddle and continue the game, free on his own word.
This is so that he can attempt in turn to capture someone before the
break-up of the press in order to compensate for his own loss. Or
again, so as to obtain the help of a friend at-the cost of deniers. This is
the way that Robert of Bethune freed himself, according to the
Anonymous, who is very well informed on .this point: he was taken
but "he offered so much to a knight called Fleming of Crepelaine that
he freed him and brought him back to safety." A small and somewhat
shameful market hides beneath the glitter of prowess. And in fact, the
battle ends with a run on the spoils. So as to contain it, Philip
Augustus has the rallying call sounded and forbids pursuit beyond a
mile - but the Anonymous has seen the hunt carried out over more
than two miles of land. In fact, the king worried that after nightfall
the wealthy prisoners he had made might succeed in escaping or
might be freed by a party of their comrades. -He himself had won
much, and now that the judgment of God had been rendered, he was
thinking of nothing else but putting his prisoners in a safe place.
Finally, we must note that, in reality, the role of single combat is
very minor. Verbruggen (De Krijgskunst in West Europa), who has
studied all these traces, has established that they were always only
accidental outbursts, the irruptions of improvidence and of "youth,"
quickly controlled by a return to prudence, the pre-eminent virtue. In
William the Breton's narrative, he notes only five, in contrast with the
fifteen great deeds performed by the more wary team leaders who had
taken great pains not to venture outside the conrois giving them
support and protecting them from the worst of the danger. Duels
~ere rare at Bouvines. On that day, only a single ohe occu~t
_between th~_nY..Q.~s.
Otto, along with the Count of Flanders and the Count of Boulogne,
had solemnly sworn to pursue only one aim: to come close to Philip,
not to let go, to' reach him, to force him into single combat, and finally
VICTORY 129
to kill him. On the chessboard, the two main pieces are thus set down
face to face, each defended by numerous but dispensable pawns and,
behind this fragile advance, by a much tougher cordon of knights. As
the game opens, the two lines come together owing to the approach
by the camp of the Blacks: Otto was the one attacking, faithful-to his
oath. He is carried along by a "Teutonic rage" and his foot soldiers,
probably better armed than those from the communes of Picardy and
the Soissonais facing them, break through all the way to the King of
France, surround him, and pull him down from his horse. Thrown on
his back, for a moment· Philip Augustus is in danger of being
wounded by the knives of these battle laborers, of perishing under the
blows of these villeins given work by the Emperor. But the hand of
God protected him as well as did his armor, the best armor as he was
the wealthiest. He pulled himself out, jumped back in the saddle and
the action is reversed.
Nobly, the Capetian was not using foot soldiers. It is knights,
comrades of his house, his team, this unit which is as his own person,
which he sends forth. The duel is then engaged according to the rules,
not between two individuals but between two "banners," two
conrois, two bodies welded by a collective task. The collaborators of
the French King threw themselves on those of Otto. The most daring
of them, Peter Mauvoisin, reached- the Emperor, succeeding in
grabbing his horse by the bridle. Gerard la Truie, who was behind
him, realized that it would not be possible to bring back alive this
prey, more valuable than all others. The Emperor had to be slain.
With his hands - which were in fact the hands of Philip Augustus - he
used the dagger against the armor. But it resisted, its quality being as
good as that of .rhe Capetian. But at least the horse was slain. Otto
freed himself, fled, was thrown to the ground three times 'and got
back up on his feet three times. The oldest and wisest men of the royal
mesnie, William of Garlande and Bartholomew of Roye, decided not
to continue the pursuit any further. It would have been an act of
immoderation. God had not wanted the Emperor's life to be taken;
He was becoming irritated by the attempts to force His hand; He
might very well avenge Himself by deciding on yet another reversal.
They knew how God punishes arrogance. Otto had left the field at
full gallop. This' was enough: the verdict had been rendered. The
battle was over. The Relatio Marchianensis states that it lasted only
one hour. More correctly, William the Breton says three.
God did it all, He who "upsets the designs of princes." For a
moment, He had tolerated evil to break loose, the wicked to threaten
the r@teous. He had granted this delay to the damned only so that
they could have a little-time to repent. They did not take advantage of
 130 COMMENTARY
this. Since they are obstinate, He crushes them, He punishes them by
arming with power the hands of the weak. Marvelously, the latter are
chosen to be the executors of His vengeance. But who has avenged
Himself? Only Him, and upon those who had defied Him by wickedly
breaking His peace. They are impious, sacrilegious men who, like
wolves disguised as sheep, had dared to sew the sign of the cross on
their clothing. These madmen had violated the interdicts whose
respect He demands. They had sullied their way by manipulating
deniers, by paying mercenaries - these dregs of the earth, this
pestilence, these Devil worshippers upon whom the Church has put
the anathema. They have dared to break the Sunday truce, the
tenacious remainder of all the peace enclaves with which the eleventh-
century councils had broadly sprinkled the path of the seasons, like so
many small sacred islands. They were blinded by pride.
In truth everything had hinged on the council that Otto had called
the day before the battle. The hotheads, the "youth," these Rolands
who have nothing but prowess in mind, whose courage gives itself
over to immoderation, prevailed over the wise men who reminded
him of the risks one runs when ignoring taboos. They screamed that
they should not wait for the morrow, but attack the army of old men
right away. The Historia regnum Francorum, which ends in 1214 and
which was written at Saint-Gerrnain-des-Pres, specifies that in the
opposite camp the first incitement to risk the battle was that "Prince
Louis had with him all the youth of Gaul while King Philip had with
him only weak and elderly knights." They will rush these stale stiff
knights, these Ganelons, who, as happened with the Count of Saint-
Pol, easily become breathless. But they should not have banked on it
because these knights' souls are armed with prudence and the fear of
God. This time, it is the Rolands who are the traitors. Through their
excess, they have ruptured the peace of the Lord, and this was the
primary reason for their defeat. Everyone thinks so, including,
amongst the most notable, those who, like the author of the Chanson
de Guillaume le Marechal, dislike the French and are enraged at their
triumph. Most of the chronicles emphasize this point: July 27, 1214
fell on a Sunday.
But the coalition was also beaten because it was made up of
heretics - which is why Michelet likes them so much. John Lackland
and Otto have reacted to the sanctions, the anathemas, the
excommunications, the interdicts the Pope has thrown at them by the
handful, by attacking the Roman Church at its weak point. This led
to their being promptly supported by a whole current of protest, a
powerful current, broadly spread out over the whole of Latin
Christendom. The real Cathars (were there ever many of them?) were
I'
I
VICTORY 131
not Christian; the dogma to which they adhered went counter to the
doctrinal positions which make up the core of Christianity. But if so
many men and women did listen to them, it was because the face
presented by the Church did not please them any longer. At that time,
this repulsion was provoked by prelates too well ensconced in all the
worldly comforts, by fat canons who went around preaching that one
had to be lean to enter the kingdom of heaven, that all the people
exploited by the seigniory must kiss the hand of their master, must
pay all their dues, and, while praising God, must wash away Adam's
sin with the daily sweat of their brow. It was provoked by the
impostors who prayed to Mary Magdalen while dreaming of her
charms and who were obsessed with "loose" virgins. All these
Churchmen nonetheless proclaimed, while keeping their eyes lowered,
that the knightly feast is a guilty one, the world is wicked, youth must
make neither love nor war, the rich are obligated to give all their
money to those who pray, sing, stuff themselves, drink, fornicate, and
do nothing with their hands. There were gibes about the Templars
who were suspected of being sodomites and who were known to be
very clever at managing capital entrusted to them. There was even
irritation at the Cistercian monks who mortified their bodies in the
secrecy of forests, who were only seen at fairs where they negotiated
more efficiently than anyone else, or at auctions where, loaded with
deniers, they grabbed all the good deals from under everyone else's
noses. This bitter and ironical revolt was not limited to Albigensian
France. It was simmering everywhere. It was, we must note, based
upon a better reading of the Scriptures, and its demands regarding
the clergy in fact bear witness to the maturity of the lay people who
were emerging from savagery and beginning to adopt the belief that
salvation is earned with a gift of the heart rather than with
submission to rites. Those who went to war against ecclesiastical
structures by claiming that there were too many clerks and that one
could save one's soul without giving them so much money were sure
to be heard.
This is exactly what Otto was saying and what John Lackland used
to say before his excommunication was lifted. They 'were each pitting
public opinion against Innocent Ill, their common adversary. The
Canon of Liege who composed the Vita Odiliae attributes to the
Emperor the following speech on the eve of Bouvines: "Why are there
so many people to pray? Most of them do not serve God; let us send
~hem -back to work. L:t us leave only two in small. churches and fo~r
III th~la'rge ones. ThIS would be an ample sufficiency. And let this
small remainder live, as befits it, in true poverty. Thus we could share
the' wealth of the Church amongst ourselves." In his Philippiad,
..... .....---~----------_._------
132 COMMENTARY
William the Breton takes up this speech and expands on it, aiming to
make the Emperor even more odious: "As to the clerks and the
monks whom Philip so much exalts, whom he loves, protects, and
defends with all the ardor of his heart, we must put them to death or
I
deport them so that there will only be a few of them, that their
I resources be thus reduced and the small product of the offerings
I should suffice for their keep. Let knights who take care of public
l affairs and who, either by fighting or in peace, provide the people and
the clergy with its tranquility, take possession of their land and collect
the large tithes. [This amounted to joining the forefront of advanced
Christianity, to take up the argument of those who, as Dominic and
Francis of Assisi had recently done, felt that the Church would not
triumph over the heretic. challenge and would not regain the support
of the urban multitudes lest it renounce seignorial wealth and
become pure and mendicant, that is, truly follow Christ in humility.
At the same time, the Emperor's speech intends nonetheless to
maintain social order and to distribute the wealth of the Church, not
., ' to the poor, but to the nobility.] On the very day the Father of fathers
I'
It set the imperial diadem on my brow, I promulgated a law, had it put
'1 down in writing and wanted it rigorously applied throughout the
whole world. It prescribed that churches should only receive petty
tithes and offerings, that they should give to us the rural domains so
that we could insure the subsistence of the people and the pay of the
knights. [Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God
what belongs to God.] Since the clergy refuse to obey me and to
respect this decree, should I not lay a heavy hand on them? Do I not
have the right to take away from them the great tithes and the
seigniories? Can I not add a law to that of Charles Martel who did
not want to take away the clerks' lands? Since he took away their
tithes, can I not just as well take away their lands, I who can make
and break laws, who alone possess the empire of the whole world? [In
I. the eyes of William the Breton, this shows the immoderation of the
, -J man who is contesting the Capetian Charlemagne's inheritance and
j
who is claiming a sovereignty superior to that of the French king.]
Will I not be allowed to chain the clergy with a law such that it will
have to content itself with what it receives and with the first fruits of
the harvest, finally learning to become more humble and less
arrogant? The Church will be so much more useful and efficacious
after I thus restore justice. Let knights who are burning to serve
possess these well-cultivated fields, these lands flowing with delights
and riches, instead of these lazy people, born only to devour grain and
living in idleness, shriveling up in the shade, these useless men whose
sole occupation is to follow Bacchus and Venus, whose gluttony and
, ..
VICTORY 133
vice cause their members to swell up more and more and give them an
enormous pot-belly?"
On the field of Bouvines, there are in fact two different view f
ecc eSlastlca 1 e con ron eac oun s to think
at t e statements 0 Otto and his allies were opportunistic, that they
were dictated by interest. And yet, the harangue appears to be
burning with t~2£!!:it o(fffO"rm. It was convincing. On the other
\~self-mterest also influenced Philip Augustus to oppose the
Emperor, to support the Pope. ~Y.Lth.eJGng...Qf..Er.ance-was...n.o.-less
sincere in taking up the role of defender of the establis~cler. His
-arm-ywas a gatllertng-of-clti'e1'S;'"WlS'eand prudent men. Through the
perfection of its organization alone, it bore witness to regularity,
conservatism. It wished to be the bastion of tradition itself; it aimed
with all its might to maintain a world system, an arrangement of
social relations of which the King, the elect of God and responsible
only to Him, saw himself as the immutable pivot. Around his person
the three hierarchized "orders" were set out in their rightful places,
exchanging mutual services. This was the case on the battlefield as
well as in life: at his feet, the workers of the communal militias; at his
head, the chaplains, dispensers of liturgy - it was only right that the
latter devote themselves completely to their profession and that, in
order to sing psalms well, they should live very comfortably from the
profits of a seigniory. Finally, there were the men of war who gave
support to the King's avenging arm. The harmonious edifice thus
appeared as a stand against the enterprise of subversion which could
only lead to chaos since it went counter to the laws of the Creator.
God dislikes protestors. His will can be relied on to defend the social
order. Thanks to Him, Simon de Montfort was able to trample the
Albigenses under foot, open up the way for the inquisitors, and
prepare the pyre of Montsegur. Thanks to Him, Philip will prevail
over Otto, whose so-called reform would impoverish the priests. The
sortileges of the Spanish woman, the old Countess of Flanders,
cannot prevail against him. The King may well fall from his horse;
God will help him up, victorious.
And therefore, in the heat of the afternoon, the intrigue quickly
comes to its conclusion. "For the praise and the glory of the majesty
and the honor of the Holy Church": the majesty of the King of the
three orders, the honor of a wealthy, totalitarian, and repressive
Church. And as soon as the debacle begins, Philip completes God's
vengeance: he purifies the field of battle. On this field emptied by the
rout, there remains a tenacious sore. It is the band of 700 Brabancons
who had protected Renaud of Dammartin when he needed to catch
his breath between charges. The world must 'be freed from this
 134 COMMENTARY
pestilence as quickly as possible. The King of France has them
liquidated by Thomas of Saint-Valery, his fifty knights and his 2,000
foot soldiers. They suffer no loss: only one of the justiciars does not
answer the roll call; he is thought dead, but he is healed. It is a
miracle. In fact, the compact phalanxes of routiers did not generally
I let themselves be reduced so easily. God again was present. It is He
11 still who inspires Philip to be merciful, to show clemency toward the
I knights he has captured. He has the right to have them put to death:
the concept of monarchy was by then strong enough that in 1214 one
could have invoked - but in truth without quite believing in it - the
offense of lese-majesty. The King grants them their lives, even Renaud
of Dammartin, the wicked traitor. God is merciful. His lieutenant is
in his image; while he must show himself terrible toward· the
arrogant, he treats with magnanimity those who submit humbly.
As soon as the satanic element of the varrquished army has been
exterminated, as soon as the warriors who had been corrupted by
money have bowed their heads, an era of' serenity begins. Just as had
happened in Flanders in 1127 after the execution of the murderers,
"the calamities of this time are thenceforth over, divine grace brings
back, along with the charms of the month of May, the benefits of
·,
I
peace and of the ancient ways of the land." The effect of the battle
!I can be perceived immediately. The world establishes itself anew in
harmony. King Philip can peacefully complete his ageing process.
"Never after did anyone dare wage war against him, but he lived-in
great peace, and the whole of the land was in great peace for a long
time to come." The Anonymous of Bethune is correct. After the
account of Bouvines, during the last eight years of the reign, the
Chroniques de Saint-Denis find nothing to relate except eclipses.
The event was like a loud burst of sound which, at a stroke, stops
the din and re-establishes silence. In its happiness, the kingdom has
no more history till the death of Philip the Conqueror, till the funeral
procession which carries his remains to the Merovingian tombs.
Almost without any break, the eulogy of the defunct follows the
account of the battle: "In the year of our Lord 1223, the good king
Philip died at the castle of Mantes; he was a very wise king, noble in
I.1
I
virtue, great in deeds, bright in renown, glorious in government,
victorious in battle. The Kingdom of France grew and multiplied
I marvelously, the seigniors supported and guarded virtuously the right
and the nobility of the crown of France. He vanquished and overcame
many noble and powerful princes in the kingdom who opposed him.
At all times he was the shield of the Holy Church against all
adversity; he defended and protected the church of Saint-Denis in
France as its own chamber over all others in the special privilege of
·:
VICTORY 135
love, and showed many times by his works the great affection he
always had for the martyrs and their church. He was solicitous of and
in love with the Christian faith ever since the first days of his youth;
he took the sign of this holy cross on which our Lord was hanged and
sewed it on his shoulders to go and deliver the sepulchre and to suffer
pain and labor for the love of our Lord; he went overseas with a great
army against the enemies of the cross and worked loyally and
completely till the city of Acre was taken. And after he had become
somewhat weaker and old, he did not spare his son but sent him twice
with a great army to the Albi region to destroy the buggery of that
land. He gave in his lifetime, and after his death, great sums to
support the strength of the righteous sons of the Holy Church against
the Albigensian buggers. With largess, he sowed alms for the poor in
many places. He lies in state in a sepulcher in the church of Saint-
Denis in France which is the sepulcher of kings and the crown of
emperors, nobly and honorably as befits such a prince."
In fact, at the very moment that God, confirming the legitimacy of
Philip Augustus, makes his enemies flee in every direction and hands
Otto over to the shame of defeat, thereby condemning him henceforth
to wander around in distress from one refuge to the next before dying
an obscure death, while celestial powers decreed that from then on
"the word 'German' would be an object of scorn amongst the Latin
peoples," the Eternal also punishes John Lackland. -He drives him to
flee in the face of the host led by Prince Louis, to lift the siege of
Roche-aux-Moines, to retreat promptly to the ocean. Told of the
victory in Flanders, the barons of Poitou have messages delivered to
the Capetian to assure him of their loyalty. But Philip did not trust the
"turncoats" of the South. He went toward them with that same army
of Bouvines, which felt no fatigue, and the King made a show of its
strength, convincing the people of Aquitaine that he was not to be
placated with words. The campaign met with no resistance. It was,
like previous campaigns had been in the Macon region, a progress
broken up by parleys. In these regions as well, war was over and was
going to be so for a long time. At every halt; the sovereign's retinue,
looking less like an army than a traveling court in session, redressed
wrongs, received homages and promises, took hostages, rearranged
everything according to justice. It eventually received John Lackland's
messengers, among whom was the ubiquitous papal legate. The King
of France, writes William the Breton, could very well have played it
all a second time, forcingthis other king who was contesting his right
to a duel; he could have waged battle again. He had 2,000 knights
with him. But piously, he did not tempt the Lord, his God: he
accepted the parley. A truce - not peace but an absence of war - was
 136 COMMENTARY
concluded for five years. For the next five years, grievances would be
I
, I settled in "assembly" and the knights would only rise from their seats
of justice for exercise in the tournaments.
Philip Augustus had celebrated his triumph earlier. He did so in
Paris of course, as was fitting, in his town, the jewel in his crown,
which he had just had surrounded by protective walls at great cost.
Every school book since the First World War has told the story of the
glorious procession which left Bouvines dragging the captive counts
tied up on waggons. William the Breton turns this into an idyll of the
powerful and the poor. On the evening of a harvest day, he crowns
with flowers the laborers, exhausted, black from the sun, dried out by
the heat, and has them dance with joy along the route. In a Paris that
/
has been illuminated, an edifying spectacle unfolds: there is
unanimous jubilation which finally reconciles the three "orders,"
destroys class hatred in favor of the harmony pleasing to the Good
Lord. The knights have magnificently fulfilled their judicial function.
Reunited, the clergy and the people, the intellectuals of the University
I and the craftsmen - that is, the Church and the "poor" - welcome the
,I warriors whose bravery and loyalty have freed them from evil. The
men of prayer, the canons, the teachers, the pupils sing canticles as
they used to; the bourgeois sing also, in their own way. Seven days of
vacation: the liturgy started on Sunday overflows into the whole week.
It is a collective incantation, a chorus, a ritual dance of the new-found
peace. Everyone has a part in this ceremony, each in his appointed
place. Let them not step out of it: God and the King vigilantly watch
over them.
This cel tion is that of the royal order whic.h the .Y.ict09:...~s
vin icated. Bouvines has_~e .~~wJiiii:..§e oEuLence_aud
~othfulli~..a £attL:Dtd.. 'tIi~ ~ejgUQriaL9~~e
sword rattlgs. But it has mostly given legitimacy where it was neeaea
most, to Philip's political action, to his conquests, his tricks, his
intrigues against Richard Lionheart, the captive crusader, to his
It disinheriting of King John, to his expulsion of the Jews. Bouvines is a
collection of significant symbols. Otto has fled, has disappeared.
1
I Caesar's emblems, demolished, have fallen to the ground from the
chariot which had lifted them up toward the sky. Only the dragon,
j this malevolent symbol, remains. Philiphas the eagle delive~ to the
man that the Pope sees as the goodTmpero-t;-Fredcttct<1rThis shows
the Kmg of France as arbIter of the lmper~:-Wtra-coula~
I ~estlOn hIS claims to full sovereIgnty? Re is truly Charlemagne's
heir, the guide of all Christians. Now, there is no one in the kingdom
who would dare rebel against him. All the felons have been caged.
Nfvbe val,ye..of the lom also makes Bouvines an unprecedented event.
ever before had a war brought in, in a single cast of the net, so many
l
I'
I.
~I
VICTORY 137
captives and of such a high caliber. At Courcelles, on September 28,
1198, Richard Lionheart had been able to seize eighty French knights,
200 horses of which forty were "with iron," that is, were equipped
with armor. We see him in ecstasy over such a great success. He
exults, he lets the whole world know of this incredible prize. The
prize from Bouvines is incomparably larger. The inscription on the
gate of Arras lists 300 noble prisoners and so do several chroniclers.
The smallest estimate found is 130. We have access to very precise
information because Philip had the treasure he was bringing back,
and which he had dispersed in various strongrooms, minutely
inventoried. He was attached to it. As soon as he had seen Otto and
his allies take flight, he thought of nothing else. He ceaselessly
watched over these riches, binding them, in order to avoid escape,
into a whole network of cautions and pledges. The "catalog of
captives" compiled in the first days of August lists 110 knights
brought back to Paris on the wagons of the communes, sixteen
entrusted to French barons, three more to officers of the King. But
this list is incomplete. A good portion of the cargo has been left at
stops along the way. This great horde was worth an enormous
amount of deniers. However, not all of it was negotiable and the King
did not expect to reap the whole profit himself, far from it. He was
only the entrepreneur of a collective action. First of all, he had to
reward his collaborators, pay those who had each brought back from
the hunt a component of the picture. Some individuals were
exchanged for friends that the adversary held in his prisons.
Generously, the king distributed part of the game to his kin and
friends. He did not sell the whole of the remainder. He had interest in
keeping the most dangerous rebels from harming him in the future,
The inveterate traitors, the backsliders, were condemned to perpetual
imprisonment. This was the case with Renaud of Dammartin; the
king heard, or had someone tell him, that Renaud was still plotting
against him at Bapaume. But nonetheless, the captives were very
numerous and many could command a high price: elevencounts, dozens
of bannerets. He could hope to obtain at least 1,000 pounds, that is,
240,000 silver coins, for the lesser of these men.
The King himself was becoming wealthier than any King of France
had ever been. And now he was in a position to discuss, to negotiate,
as he did with the Countess of Flanders. He was able, for a long time
to come, to keep a tight rein on the most refractory principalities.
Blessed be the Lord who establishes in plenty those who serve Him
well. Through the victory God gave it, the Capetian monarchy
became truly - and we must here load the word with its full
significance - -'Q.nsecrated. To the very young Louis, the grandson,
this infant of three months, sainthood was already vouchsafed.
 The Legend

I
I
!
I
 Birth of the Myth

There is no doubt about the magnitude of the event which occurred

on Sunday July 27, 1214. It was the first "battle champel" a king of
France had dared wage in a century, even though he had done so very
hesitantly and, one might even say, in spite of himself. It was the first
, "., victory won by a Capetian king. Never, within human memory, had a
• decision been so clear cut, had the affirmation of a right been so
ij ringing. ~fter Bouvines, nothing can stand in the way of the
~

! incredible expansion of the royal domam. Nothmg can stop the

oaih.{fs trom thoroughly exploiting the subjugated provinces, for
instance putting "into such a servitude the whole of Flanders,
inherited by Louis, that all those who heard about it marveled that
one could so suffer and endure." Henceforth no prjncipa1ity in the
whole of the kingdom was able to b'!lk. Bouvines led immediately,
through Otto's flight, to the triumph of Frederick II and to the
laureled busts of the gates of Capua and, through John Lackland's
failure, to the defiantly brandished arms of the English barons in the
field of Runnymede. After Las Navas de Tolosa, after Muret, Bouvines
fixed the destinies of all the Euro ean states for ce . to tome-:-
e ve accounts I have used show that the importance of the event
cyas perceived right away at the French king's court and in the regions
close to the field of battle. This is evidenced as well by the immediate
insertion of William the Breton's report into the official historio-
graphical undertaking of which the abbey of Saint-Denis was the
workshop, by Ingeborg's note in her prayer book, by the Parisian
church of Saint Catherine of the Val-des-Ecoliers that Louis IX had
built in memory of his father and his grandfather "for the joy and for
the victory they had over the enemy at the bridge of Bouvines."
Finally and most importantly, it was evidenced by the abbey of the
congregation of Saint Victor which King Philip founded near Senlis
142 THE LEGEND
by offering in sacrifice a portion of the spoils. He dedicated it to Our
Lady of Victories and wished for thanksgiving to be perpetually sung
in it. This was the true commemorative monument of the battle, the
conservator of its memory. The ruins of the church, which Louis XI
rebuilt, still exist today in the Valois landscape. Yet the repercussions
of the event spread out farther, in successive waves. We will try to
measure these resonances.
They are numerous because high European culture in tbUhi!!~!.h
c~ry was vcr, mudl oriented toward hi§!.<2ry. Of course, most of
the recollection of the past was preserved only in memory. Part of this
repository was lost from one generation to the next. The other part,
altered more and more, was transmitted through the spoken word,
through narratives told by elders. But a fragment of it became fixed in
writing. The writing of history was a tradition in religious
communities, monasteries, and cathedral chapters, and the main
activity in the scriptorium, which was a natural adjunct of these
establishments, consisted in rescuing events from oblivion. This was
due to the close tie between the function of prayer, the celebration of
God's glory through the liturgical office, and the writing of a
historical work: if it is true that the universal deeds of men manifest
God's will, make a show of His absolute power, give warnings, then it
behoves His servants to carefully collect all these signs, to align them
on the thread of time, to order them into a discourse. To do this so
that this discourse, fragmented, discontinuous, enigmatic, could in
the future, in the very light of its continuation, be commented upon,
criticized, deciphered, and offered to the meditation of wisdom.
Wisdom will find in it exhortations, examples, useful indications to
orient the Christian people in the right path and to lead them to
salvation. Since Adam, humanity meanders, it stumbles, it loses its
way. History shows the path of its detours, its hesitations, its many
straightenings out. This is a continuous movement. The coming of
Jesus to the world has' not changed its course; it has simply marked it
with a deep caesura, changing the color of time into that of hope.
Since then, progress has been pursued amongst ambushes; it has been
a long crossing of the Red Sea under the threat of Pharaoh Satan.
Progress aims straight for the eternal, for this final point, the
triumphant return of Christ, Parousia, the resurrection of the dead,
that day, at the end of time, when all the actors in human history will
be summoned to the judgment of truth. As long as the skies remain
closed, as long as the increated light has not yet swept over the
completion of the visible universe - as long as history is not over -
men are not capable of clearly judging the past. But reflection over the
deeds of their predecessors is a way for them to prepare for the end of
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 143
the world, to advance toward perfection. They must scrutinize, the
best they can, that part of history which has already unfolded. They
must meditate, in particular, over battles where God speaks louder,
more clearly than anywhere else. These considerations explain the
continuation of Annals in which successive writers recorded, as they
occurred, the events which seemed notable to them, the taking up of
this material in the Chronicles, and more ambitiously in the Histories,
many of which started with the Flood. In the thirteenth century the
enthusiasm for this sort of enterprise remained quite high amongst
monks and clerks.
But in the courts of great and smaller lords, these centers,
constantly growing in numbers and in strength, of a culture which
was slowly becoming desacralized, there was also a growing interest
in history, and there too it was beginning to be written down. Its
purpose, though, was markedly different: here the aim was to glorify
a lineage, a dynasty, to teach princes, to educate knights, to support a
ruler, an ethic, a social formation. They responded, as well, to the
need to satisfy the curiosity of nobles, an increasing number of whom
knew how to read, and who at any rate all liked to be informed of
events they had themselves experienced as well as of those they had
heard about and which had intrigued them. Thus, numerous
histories, chronicles, and annals were written in every province of
Christendom during the years following Bouvines - most of them in
Latin, but a few as well in the language of worldly entertainments.
Almost all these manuscripts are lost today. But modern scholarship
has enabled many of the surviving texts to be published. TW~
hundred and seventy-five of these printed sources have been
examined here; these were written during the life-spans of the
generation which fought at the battle and of the two generations
which followed it, thus up to the final years of the thirteenth century.
The most numerous came from the regions of the Empire, not only
because, at that time, the writing of historical literature was very
active in these areas but also because German scholars have been
more diligent in publishing this kind of document. What were, in all
these accounts of a still recent past, the echoes of Bo~
. I he first important observaftoIl is that the event IS mentioned in
ninety-two of these historical accounts, and no more. This means that
two-t lrds of them do no~i.!L2.ne word about this "day that
ma e ra e. e are, right away, tempted to locate the areas where
the professionals of the chronicle, of the history, of the annual report,
did or did not pay attention to Philip Augustus's victory. Does not
this manner of delineating those zones which were sensitive and those
of greater.or lesser indifference amount to an advance toward a deep,
 . !
I

BIRTH OF THE MYTH 145

to the battle seems less here: a quarter of the chroniclers fail to
mention the event. The proportion of silent accounts is greater in
Normandy - a third; it reaches a half in Champagne, in Burgundy, in
Touraine, all areas which, however, had provided contingents for the
victorious army. In die Kin dom of England, the fame of Bouvines
0
04)0 0
0
seems to have been mo~d - ID" ID royes ut
0
0
0
4)
0
was-ress
norictlieless 'It than that of another event, the lifting of the
0 0
00
0 0
0
interdict which, the previous year, had freed the country from a long
0 0
malaise): sixty percent of the annals and the chronicle~ we have
0
0
analyzed spear< of th~ ·.ba"iilf;:-Toward tile midc:ile of the century
0 Matthe.w.-Eat:is-oompile<I;":lt Saint Albans, a history of the English. At
the end of the book where he gave as a summary a list of the facts he
00 000 0
deemed the most important, he did not fail to include Bouvines
0
0 0 amongst the few prodigies, the rare "admirable things" which he
knew of and which had occurred in the preceding fifty years. On this
other side of the North Sea, at any rate, the best part of the allusions
to the French King's victory express praise. This includes all the
accounts by the Cistercian monks right up to the borders of Scotland:
John Lackland, who had solid grounds to feel that the wool trade had
made-their abbeys too wealthy, had taken deniers from them. Finally,
almost a third of all the references come from the countries of the
Empire. However, since historical narratives are -plentiful in these
areas, the proportion of chroniclers who decided, to devote space to
o
4)
the event is relatively small. Most of those who felt the need to do so
o
were writing in Lotharingia, in this region which, right up to Cologne
Sources: and the Vosges Mountains, strongly felt the repercussions of anything
• Contemporary to Philip Augustus (+ 1223) Royal domain in 1180 important happening in Flanders. Many of the documents coming
() Dating from around 1223 to 1270 Expansion prior to. Bouvines
o From 1270 to the beginning of the 14th century • Expansion prior to 1270
from these provinces remained silent: the chronicle of the Dukes of
o Not mentioning Bouvines - - - Boundaries of the Kingdom Brabant, which includes the defeat at Steppes, overlooks the debacle
of Bouvines. In the final analysis, the proportion of chronicles that are
Figure 2 Traces of the event in the European chronicles of the thirteenth silent is. no smaller here than in Normandy: a third of the whole. The
century other echoes collected by writers on this side of Christendom were
almost all (with the exception of an isolated locus of perception in
genuine, still completely unknown geography of what was then in Austria at Klosterneuburg) located in Saxony, Otto's country, and in
rope a consciousness one could well call political? Swabia and Alsace, the country of the Staufens. Italy remained

Q
It is not surprising to see that thirty-three - that is, a third - of the
1.1 writings celebrating Bouvines originate in old Francia.Jn that part of
e kingdom located east of Brittany and north of the River Loire.
Naturally, all the sources from the old Capetian domain mention the
battle. However, the most numerous echo~.Qme frQm the countr.of
Flanders and its surrounaIngs, from ~ where historical production
was more abundant and which, close to the place where the battle
had occurred, had experienced its effects more directly. Yet, attention
completely indifferent. We do, however, spot an immediate trace in
Geneva, and another at the Abbey of Monte Cassino where they paid
much attention to anything that could affect the power of the King of
Sicily, who was, at that time, Frederick 11. Finally, a last trace is found
in a history of the emperors and the popes, probably written in
Tuscany in 1278.
Everywhere else, none of those recording important news in
writing or compiling narratives of the past seem to have been
 146 THE LEGEND
interested in Bouvines at all: nothing in Scandinavian sources, of
which three, however, had a word to say about the marriage of Philip
Augustus and Ingeborg; in France itself, barely beyond the River
Loire, silence sets in. This deliberate lack of interest is the best
available index of the thickness of the wall then dividing the kingdom
in two: not a single echo in the Jura region, in the Alps, in Provence.
There is a late mention in the Albigensian history of William of
Puylaurens, another at Poitiers, a third at Bordeaux, a last one in the
great Catalan monastery of Ripoll: overall, Aquitaine has not been
affected. Its eyes are turned toward Muret, toward the "matter of
peace and faith" which Simon de Montfort and the crusaders are
intent on brutally settling in the name of the Pope by burning Cathars
to their hearts' content. Let us consider the case of Bernard Itier, the
monk in charge of the book closet at Saint-Martial of Limoges, a
great crossroads for pilgrims and thus, in short, an excellent
observation post for information. Bernard himself was far from
stupid: in the margin of a manuscript he noted the facts of the year
which had struck him. There were many events which seemed to him
worthy of recording in 1214: the death of an important benefactor of
the monastery, the Bishop of Poitiers; the admission of a new brother,
this because the latter had offered books to the community; the
quality of the grape harvest; the enmities which were then dividing
the rival congregation of Grandmont; the hunt for heretics and
usurers conducted that year; the dealings between the lords of the
Limousin and John Lackland; the preaching of a Crusade; the
introduction of a new office in honor of the Holy Virgin; the death of
the abbot; the construction of a pillar in the cloister; and finally the
hard rough wind which, on the eve of the feast day of Saint Andrew,
ripped stones off the bell-tower. He does not say one word about
Bouvines. In a Europe crisscrossed by tradesmen, by teams of
tourneyers, by pilgrims, where councils brought together prelates
coming from all corners of the world, where bands of the poor
constantly roamed looking for the road to Jerusalem, where, from
windmill to tavern, news traveled all the way to the pioneering
frontiers of the clearings, the shock waves caused by this battle in
which the four powers of Christendom had confronted each other,
where God, on that day, had decided their destinies, were easily heard
all the way to Campania, to areas neighboring Hungary, to the shores
of the Welsh sea. This was because, in these parts, ears which had
become attuned to certain political behavior heard them, while at the
gates of Orleans, of Chalon-sur-Saone, a wall of indifference to
anything that might happen to the "French," those strangers, those
poor folk, caused the news to die down right away. Even a few miles
;I
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 147
away from the fields of Cysoing, people remained deaf to the news: of
that year's war, the chronicle of a monastery close to Dunkirk retains
only one episode - the damage that Ferrand, the Count of Flanders,
inflicted on the land of Arnoul of Guines.
Of these ninety-tF.O ~cfQyots.~!X:.titU9.D.si.sLoi,..Q1l1x...f!.1e.w.._
lines. Nine of diem limit themselves to locating the event in space and
tm1e. Another one adds without further comment that the day was a
Sunday. When the accounts are a little less laconic, they also
-:emphasize this point: the battle occurred. at:..a..time-wR~ghtingwm;"
forbidden. "Nineteen of the commentators note this. However, more
than three-fourths of them put the main emphasis on the capture by
the French King of a certain number of counts. Two heard that these
counts numbered five, and eight heard that there were four of them.
In contrast, seven accounts mention only one, the Count of Flanders.
Sixteen add the Count of Boulogne; twenty-three mention yet a third,
the Count of Salisbury. Finally, it appears that it is the capture of the
Count of Flanders which is the heart of the event, its hard core, and
the most vivid aspect of the news which struck contemporaries.
Otto's flight attracted less notice: only half the chroniclers mention it.
However, eight of them, of which five were writing in the Empire,
speak of nothing else. Six feel the need to specify that the Emperor
was excommunicated. Five attempt to 'assess, in addition, the size of
the contingents. Eight recalled that the number of prisoners was
exceptionally large. Here.and there are some supplementary comments:
at Liege, there is an allusion to Frederick 11, at Dijon, to the Duke of
Burgundy; elsewhere, there are references to the small number of
casualties, to the joy of the people after the victory. Two of these brief
acc0l!..1!!§...IDake...th.e...mistake..of..pJ.illi!!g.I~rince Louis on the scene.
lIie lighting is not perceptibly differenT-in -tne -se'V'~rrreerrmt:)fe7
elaborate ~ccounts. Not a single one, of course, op1it~~
counts: .~.ently. Bouvines was first of all th~ Most of these
documents riie'nttoft"-61l1r-tJH:oo~them-="Franders, Boulogne,
Salisbury - but some of the more prolix ones add "Count Hairy" of
Holland, probably on account. of his strange nickname. 'However,
when Vincent of Beauvais, a Dominican intimate of King Saint Louis,
describes the battle in his Miroir historical, claiming to base himself
on what the captives told him, he only mentions Ferrand of Portugal
and Renaud of Dammartin because, in fact, he is honestly abridging
William the Breton's text. None of these more elaborate accounts
remains silent about the Emperor's flight: this episode does seem to be
second in importance of the events on which recollection has been
anchored, Of the rest of these narratives, eleven summarize the King's
harangue; ten emphasize the infraction of Sunday's peace, say a word
l
 148 THE LEGEND
about the beautiful disposition of the troops and emphasize the
incredibly large catch of prisoners; nine of them also recall that Philip
Augustus was unhorsed. In passing, there is mention of the three very
"brave" horses which, sacrificing their lives one after another,
enabled Otto to escape capture.
This analysis gives us the profile of the event: the King of France
has taken prisoner the Count of Flanders along with a few other
counts and a large number of knights; thrown to the ground, he
remounted to put to flight a "false" excommunicated emperor; this
occurred on a Sunday. When memory is reduced to its simplest
expression, it recalls a date, 1214, and the name of a bridge on a small
Flemish river.
Yet, in some places, the event has left much less superficial traces;
accounts were written where the recollections were exaggerated and
some where they were distorted. The~erations~
the WQrk of those serving the French King: the distortions were
'~~rily the wQrk of those who disliked him. In Germany, where
~riters said nothing of a defeat wIifch, according to the
chronicle of Lautersberg in Misnia, made the word "German"
become the laughing stock of the Gauls, some writers did feel obliged
to report it, but they tried to do so in such a manner as to render it less
humiliating. In the Abbey of Ursperg, Swabia, the man in charge of
writing history at that time aimed primarily at persuading his readers
that the French King had been afraid. This was with good reason: his
own barons had warned him that the enemy was exceptionally brave.
Words usually said to be those of Renaud of Dammartin are
attributed to the barons, but here the chronicler inverts them so as to
save Teutonic honor. The heroes, the formidable warriors fearing
nought, are no longer the French but the men from Germany: "their
ferocitas is such that they prefer to die in battle than to flee
shamefully." Frightened, unsure of himself, the king was supposed to
have given his knights full power to organize the battle. These would
have decided the matter by first destroying the bridge so as to block
the escape path of those who were preparing to run away, thus
forcing them to do battle. Moreover, they were assumed to have
finally won the battle despite their terror only by tricking their
invincible adversaries by enticing them into a trap, ignominiously
using "foot soldiers and the populace." They would have arranged
these plebeian combatants and their pikes into two diagonal rows,
thus laying a sort of weir, and then, by pretending to flee, they would
have drawn the good and loyal warriors of Germany into this trap. If
it were not for this stratagem, they would never have won and the
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 149
Emperor, to whom the narrative gives the King of England himself as
companion in the debacle, would never have fled. In a fragment of the
chronicle of the Princes of Brunswick, we can also read that Otto
hated war, that the burning out, the misfortune of the poor was
odious to him, that during three years he ruled very gloriously and in
great peace, that it is thus right to call him "pacific king and prince of
peace," as it was despite himself that, provoked by the wicked, he
waged the battle.
A large number of the English narratives aim, in the same s.I>.i.ri!,J!L
.Q1inimizing the CaRe.t~n·s /iloFY' WI1ham the Marshal was not at
Bouvmes but the epic song rhymed in his honor does speak of the
battle, it also stating that the French were not sure of themselves, that
they did not want to fight, and were waiting for nightfall to run away.
Renaud of Dammartin was quite right in advising against attacking
, these cowards before they began their retreat; in this way, his side
could have taken the land without any trouble and returned it to the
King of England and the Emperor. The latter did not have one fourth
of his people with him. The French won because they were four times
as strong. If Otto had waited till the next day, he would have reaped
great honor. The true hero. of the day was an Englishman, the Count
of Salisbury, who advised the Emperor to retreat and who, loyally, let
himself be captured in his stead.
Roger of Wehdover, who recounted the striking events of the years
1193-1216 in his Flowers of History which he compiled between
1219 and 1225, provided a less partial account of the battle of
Bouvines, one that was well informed and which was used by other
English historians in the thirteenth century. He perceived clearly how
King Philip relied on- the three "orders," on the counts, barons, and
knights who surrounded him, but also on the sergeants mounted and
on foot, on the communes of villages and towns which brought him
the support of the people, while everywhere bishops, clerks, and
monks were praying, continuously singing, conducting more and
more offices for "the state and the kingdom." But he shows John
Lackland's adversary, despite all-these reinforcements, worried that
he did not have a sufficient number of men for the defense because
Prince Louis was then in Poitou with a large army. The King would
then have ordered, in his panic, the destruction of the bridge at his
back, so as to take away all hope of retreat for himself and his men.
He would then have hidden behind a wall of wagons drawn up all
round his battle position. Roger has also very clearly perceived that
the allies had acted thoughtlessly by deciding to engage in a battle
champel on a Sunday. But, according to him, Renaud of Dammartin
was not the only one to advise against "dishonestly engaging in
L
150 THE LEGEND
combat on such a solemn day," of "sullying it with homicide and the
spilling of human blood." He also shows his liking for Otto who is a
little bit Plantagenet. Thus he has the Emperor say, at the council,
that if they engaged a battle on that day, they could not hope for a
happy outcome. Otto would have let himself be swayed by the
blasphemous Hugh of Boves. And while Philip Augustus - whom a
knight saved from a certain death by sacrificing himself for him and
whom his friends succeeded in putting back on his horse with
difficulty - afterwards kept himself very carefully on the defensive,
the Emperor, according to Roger of Wendover, would have
withstood, alone and in glory, the whole weight of the fighting after
Hugh of Boves' ignominous flight, valiantly defending himself with a
broadsword "which he held like a billhook with both hands, giving
with the sharp edge unfendable blows all round him. All those he hit
were stunned or fell to the ground along with their horses." Three
horses were thus killed under him, but from afar, with lances, by the
French who did not dare come near him. Yet he always got back on
the saddle easily, and each time threw himself anew onto his enemies
with a terrifying prowess. There is no mention of panicky flight, of
abandoned emblems. Finally it would have been as "unbeaten,"
having always made his adversary retreat, that Otto would have left
the field of battle with all his friends, them and himself-unharmed. As
to King John, he would have mostly regretted the 40,000 silver marks
spent in vain, and would have bitterly mentioned that nothing good
was happening to him anymore ever since he had reconciled with God
and submitted his kingdom to the Roman Church.
Can we be certain that Roger of Wendover's version is a fabrication
on all points? Regardless of the answer, it leads us to wonder whether
William the Breton has not, for his master's glory, taken the liberty of
embellishing the details of the event. Has not the legend already
infiltrated the prose chronicle, the narrative I have chosen as giving
the best trace, the most direct, the least confused? At any rate, with
this first account barely written up, William, who is henceforth held
to be the official eulogist of the Capetian victory, hurriedly took up
writing again with the aim of celebrating the French King's triumph
in a more solemn manner, of building a more sumptuous literary
monument, so as to sing of Philip in the same mode as Virgil sung of
Aeneas. In 1214, he thus begins to compose the Philippiad, a long
poem - it will end up nearly 10,000 verses long - and pursues the
work slowly, deliberately, laboriously. Ten songs were written in the
course of the first three years; in 1224 a second version made up of
twelve songs is completed which was to be translated into French
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 151
prose before the end of the century. It is in this panegyric, whose
reading we-now find tedious, that the outline of the first features of
the myth comes into view as an overprint.
t is Bouvines in fact, which makes up the entire subject of the
.flzjlippiad. The descriptIOn 0 a e occuples'tIi'elast,three-songs
of the poem which close this narrative. The conclusion of the reign is
indeed the event itself which completes all other happenings found
worthy of note, which ends this history that is the life of the most
glorious King Philip. And we can sense, very clearly, that the 7,000
preceding verses- have no other function than to introduce the
preliminaries of victory, to explain the slow steps which, little by
little, over a period of thirty-five years, have prepared the triumph
and made it possible. The first step, the necessary divine election, the
day of ' coronation, is the root of everything. Then there was the
preliminary work of purification which cleansed the kingdom of all
pollution by expelling the Jews, by burning them if they did not leave
fast enough, by punishing the many people who were taking the
Lord's name in vain, by lighting pyres everywhere so as to purge by
fire the world of heretical infection. This done, the good Lord's
lieutenant fought against the oppressors of the Church, the Count of
Sancerre, the Duke of Burgundy, and then there was also the
massacre of the 7,000 cottereaux in Berry which is here falsely
attributed to the royal army. The sovereign's entrance into politics is
-splendid, surrounded, by the brightness of fire, by the gushes of blood
of the Eternal's revenge.
Then, the next seven songs describe the difficult struggle against the
.Plantagenets, this corrupted demonic race resulting in King John. The
latter is doomed starting in Song VIII: he is the friend of heretics, of
all the Cathars whose presence poisons the south of the kingdom. The
King of France helps the crusaders chase them while King John
regrets not being able to help them better. Vanquished, he turns his
malice on the Church, the righteous, the Roman, the Catholic, and
the pious King Philip dips generously in his treasures to help the pious
canons fleeing from England after being banned by the impious
sovereign. The other evildoer, Otto of Brunswick, then makes his
entrance. It is in Rome itself that he performs his misdeeds,
persecuting pilgrims, taking their money away, going as far as to
forbid pilgrimages to the tombs of the apostles and to the Holy Land.
Song X tells of the sorrow of Philip who is in tears; he wants to
avenge the Holy Church and decides to attack the "schismatics." A
final insult coming from the Count of Boulogne strengthens him in his
resolve. At Soissons, the "leader of the children of France" tells the
prelates and the warriors that he will go and punish the two
 152 THE LEGEND
excommunicates, John Lackland and the Emperor, and that he will
brave the perils of the sea, risking everything for the re-establishment
of the worship of God suspended for seven years. Finally, Bouvines
occurs.
Here, William the Breton follows very closely the account of the
combat he had given earlier. He makes use of information he has
gathered since then to give more details about some of the incidents of
the battle. But the change comes mostly from the tone he has chosen
and which carries him along. The encounter becomes larger; it takes
on epic dimensions. It becomes colossal (there are "thousands of
companies vomited by the town of Ghent when it opens its gates'~). It
becomes cruel: it is fought on a terrain whose toponymy shows it to
have been predestined (on its western side Sanghin means "blood,"
and on its eastern side Cysoing means "carnage"), and the
engagement takes on the allure of a massacre. It has barely begun
when knights die under the blows of the valiant sergeants from
Soisson; "Bellone, his hands, his clothes, and his weapons all
bloodied, delivers mortal blows in every direction." Poetical prolifera-
tion calls for emphasis and here the superiority of the enemy becomes
incalculably exaggerated: the companions of the Count of Flanders
alone are several thousand more numerous than those of the King;
the glory of the French is to have triumphed while they were fighting
one against three. However, the most important are the embelli~h­
ments, the bouquets of witty epithets laid out as baroque ornamentatlo.n
over the original sober report. Through these adornments, this
beautification, these sidesteps, all slight but countless in number, the
first image, already not very faithful to reality, becomes even more
11. distant from it, becomes more welcoming to the wondrous.
Prudently, in a barely perceptible manner, bec~use too ma~y
eyewitnesses are still alive when William completes his work and their
memory is not that short, the angle of view has changed under the
pressure of the ideology which then dominated the French court and
this has caused a shift to occur.
This was done first of all through the effect of a small change in
lighting which becomes slightly more Caravaggian so as to accentuate
contrasts between light and dark. The battle retains its Uccello look -
the whalebone crest of the Count of Boulogne and the pirouettes of
the steeds - but it takes on a tragic aura. The wicked are blacker than
ever. They were odious; they seem even more so now. In the camp of
il lust, of sorcery, of greed, the wickedest are those folks not born in the
I kingdom and whom the Empire has thrown in packs over the world:
II' cruelty comes from Brabant, treachery from Hainaut, rage from
Saxony .
,•
'1
t '
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 153
. All the enemy chiefs are bloated with arrogance, sure of their
VIctory. They had planned for everything. Their servants have
brought along ropes with which they already see their adversaries
fettered. There are swarms of foot soldiers under their command:
Otto makes three successive walls with their bodies so as to better
prot.ect his person. Moreover, they are hypocrites: William the Breton
m hIS turn accepts all the rumors about the crosses with which they
would have adorned themselves, so as to disguise themselves as God's
combatants. Thirsting after blood, they have the malice to want to
kill the ~ing. They are looters, thinking of nothing but stealing, and
they believe themselves to be masters of the Capetian lands which
they have already share? o~t amongst themselves, of all these good
and loyal towns where, ironically and so that divine vengeance could
be fulfilled, the victorious King was to choose to keep them captive:
Chateau-Landon and Mantes for each of the two German counts
Dreux for ~illiam Long~word, Peronne for Renaud, and nothin~
less than ~ans, the be~t pnze, for Ferrand. In the long speech that this
poem attributes to him, Otto reveals his true face: it is that of an
Antichrist. Does he not intend to turn upside down the world whose
sole sovereign he claims to be, to break the order of the States and the
po~er~, an.d. to turn Churchmen into paupers? With surprising
naivete, Wdham develops at length this project of ecclesiastical
reform: as a future canon and already well fed he indeed sees it as an
abomination. There is no question in his mind that the Church has
the righ.t to be fat and comfortably dressed. Philip, its eldest son will
. defend ItS wealth, its privileges, all the exactions it extracts from the
work~rs.so as to live in greater comfort. This is the most important of
~he rrussrons that coronation invests in him. And because he assumes
,Itperfectly, ~od and his priests bless Philip the good, Philip the 'saint,
whose very Simple banner, the Oriflamme, is "similar in every way to
the banners used in church processions."
The first shift determines another one which itself leads to a more
obvious rewor~ing of the scene. In, the Philippiad, all the action
comes to'focus.mto one dramatic knot, the single combat fought by
the t~o champions, the one of God and the one of Satan. This duel,
the King ?f France ~ad ceaselessly wished for, prepared for. Philip is
u~recogmzable. He is no longer truthful history's old, crafty, prudent,
somewhat rusty leader who was retreating for fear of breathlessness
and of losing too much, who feared risking the whole of his pot in one
throw, and ,who wanted only one thing on thisjuly 27, namely to
take shelter m the marshes so as to resume the war as soon as the risks
were reasonably lessened. The hero of the Pbilippiad is without fear
and fault. Never did he retreat; if he pretended to do so, it was
 154 THE LEGEND
because he wanted "to wage battle in a well-opened field" he had
chosen a long time previously as the most suited for the unfolding of
the great ordeal. In the council where the barons, less Bayard-like
than him, were pressing him to continue the retreat, what did he say?
"Now the Lord Himself is giving me what I wanted. Now, beyond our
merits and hopes, divine favor is granting more than all our wishes.
Those we were previously trying to reach through long circuits and
the many turns of the roads, the Lord's mercy has brought to us, so
that He Himself might, through us, destroy His enemy in one blow.
With our swords, He will cut off the members of His enemies; He will
make us into cutting instruments; He will hit and we will be the
hammer; He will lead the whole battle, and we will be His ministers."
The delegation of so much destructive power causes the Capetian
to exult. He had been waiting only for this. He wants to show himself
worthy of it. Barely has the combat started when we see him rush
forward, struggling to reach the orherduelist, so as to finally be able
to measure himself against him. "Since Otto always remained in the
rear and did not want to attack the King first, the latter full of
impatience, not being able to stand any delay, burning with the desire
to fight, dared to advance into the middle of the Teutonic foot
soldiers." He plunges into the heart of German violence, defies the
daggers, purposely ignores the danger he runs; splendid, he falls,
thrown down by wicked arms. He gets up immediately and again
mows down obstacles, though without freeing himself from the
entanglements of the melee. "Neither one nor the other could find a
free path in front of him so thick was the press, so tangled were the
combatants of both parties." Cruel disappointment: God did not
want to grant the monarch's most fervent prayer, "to meet the
emperor one to one and fight like Aeneas against this new Turnus."
I have said abQ.Y.e_thatthe trans!~1~QEju1Q ..m.):1hi§.th~ result.ofrhrce-
com'I5mi!I:.c~es. The-firs''Cls tragic manicheanism: through it,
- Bouvmes is set in the middle of a permanent crusade, that of good
against evil. The second, similarly oriented, highlights the ordeal and
fills the whole of the battle with the sole liturgy of the military-duel.
As for the very decisive last ge, it turm the vi~f God's
·~~~Sr~nb 0 a nationa~b. Indeed, if the King o~
--e.:Q[Aeneas--in the Philippiad, it is not solely becail'Se1Tie
author of the poem is pedantic and that he slavishly follows Virgil.
There is a very ancient belief - the chronicle of Fredegaire already
mentioned it in the seventh century - that the Franks were the
descendants of the Trojans. ~?JJight.fut:himsel£,-hut !or a
I
cause, that of ~ ~ c ~ . "The.st~ke of-the smgle
combat is no longer a sovereign s inheritance, It IS not solely the
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BIRTH OF THE MYTH 155
repression of the arrogant and the heretics, but it is the destiny of a
nation elected to lead the world.
In the poetic celebration of Bouvines, esprit de corps, the spirit of a
body that is -let us risk use of the word here - national thus makes a
triumphant irruption. The sole true heroes, the warriors "with fiery
valor," who "never hesitate to run all sorts of dangers," are the "sons
of France." Which France? Of course, the old Frankish country, that
of Paris, of Etampes and of Senlis; the France of Saint Denis. The
victory's best architects, those knights whose collective renown shone
in all tournaments; were indeed born in the Capetian domain, in this
province beloved by Clovis and Dagobert. None of them had come
from Brittany or Aquitaine. And yet the France of the PhiliP1l.iad is
le~L!:f~.!ricted. In __fact Bo~~!!l~__Qff.!!!!.~.4_'!L the _yery time 2!...il
_profound mutation~e preceding ten years, intIie-diiV.omas
issu~Yli!§...9iancetTh~!!.~AU~~!'tuf!ia~c~a himseaPQt.King
of the...Etanks...hu.LK~U!illlce. The Whore ~ tended to
identify itself with Douce France, the country of its sovereigns. At a
time when the knights of the Parisis were beginning to take over the
Languedoc where the Plantagenets were retreating on Saintonge, the
imperceptible shift in the meaning of a word translated the
broadening of an image. This image was part of an ideology subtly
adapting itself to support and justify the strengthening of the State. As
a devoted servant, William the Breton intended all the fanfares of his
epic to help. 'serve royal policy. The battle is about to begin. Brother
Guerin positions himself alongside the ranks and exhorts' the knights.
And what does he speak of? Their race: "Victorious in all combats, it
has always destroyed its enemies." This is a reminder of a community
of blood, an affirmation of ethnic superiority, a nod at latent
xenophobia. All this-is thrown at the warriors from Flanders they are
facing who, even though they are of the kingdom, have a count who
comes from Portugal, the country of witches, and who for the most
part speak the Teutonic tongue which suffices to make them hateful.
It is also thrown at "those sons of England whom the pleasures of
debauchery and the gifts of Bacchus bind with more charms than the
gifts of fearsome Mars," who they know will soon run away in fron
of them. But it is aimed particularly at the Teutons. The two
u
champions of the duel, the two kings of the chessboard, were those of
France and Germany. It was thus only-fitting that the affirmation of a
national consciousness sprang forth from the confrontation of the
two monarchies. In the war, the Germans, these Barbarians, have
"fury" as an asset. In truth, it is a pagan virtue, that of Wotan,and the
ancient gods, and it is savage. The Germans are redoubtable, but in
the way that che large beasts of the forest are; they lack French
 156 THE hEGEND
courage which is the true courage, the nobility of the heart. It is
obvious: they are on foot, like villeins. "You, children of Gaul, you
always fight on horseback." Go for it! Should the foot soldiers of the
communes be in the way, just shove them aside, nobly. As to the lying
traitor, the Count of Boulogne, the rake who furthermore parades
around under a helmet crest as high as a banner, if he fights with so
much valor, if he is of good counsel, if he shows himself so brave,
clever, and wise, it is because, even though his corruption has allowed
the Devil to attract him to the bad camp, he is neither Flemish, nor
English, nor Teutonic: he was born in Dammartin-en-France. "The
valor which was natural to him in war proclaimed loudly that he was
truly issued of French parents. And even though his very fault has
made him degenerate in thy eyes, oh France, do not be ashamed of
him and let not your brow blush!" Good blood does not lie. Let the
hearts rejoice! With all its trumpets blasting, the Philippiad sends off
the intrepid to the assault.
To do what? Not to resolve in battle old domestic and feudal
squabbles, nor even to decide whether it was the Emperor or the King
who should lead Christendom. Rather, the goal is simply to force the
Teutons to recognize "that they are really inferior to the French and
that comparison is not even possible in the way they practise Mars,"
and "that German violence is dominated by French valor." The single
combat no longer pits two monarchs against each other but two
nations. The Count of Boulogne, the Plantagenets' rebellious vassals
- who are themselves anyway also "children of Gaul' - the Flemings,
the English themselves now play only minor roles. A new Aeneas, heir
to Charlemagne - a Charlemagne of whom it is said that he had the
Oriflamme as banner and, in his wisdom, had already punished
Saxony and had "made it red through the swords of the French" -
the King of France in the Philippiad addresses his harangues to
the "descendants of the Trojans"; he treats them as the Emperor of
the legends treated his peers. To these knights whose pride and
whose consciousness of history wholly feeds on genealogies, he also
speaks of ancestors, of race, of native virtue. But in order to weld
them into a single nation, he takes up the major themes of the stories
and poems usually sung at the gatherings of the "youth," the ancient
classical theme of Aeneas, the French themes of thechdnsons de geste.
In William the Breton's epic, ideological amplification does not
affect royal function itself. The latter .is indeed exalted, but in an
indirect manner. Rather than repeating what everyone knows, which
is that the person of the King is sacred, that no one may lay a hand on
it, and that when the sovereign chooses' to do battle, he does not
venture his own body but the honor of the kingdom and the crown,
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BIRTH OF THE MYTH 157
William presents the sovereign's victory as that of the whole people.
In the poem's finale, Philip Augustus's triumph is likened to the
victories of Pompey, Vespasian, and Titus. He has picked up the eagle
stricken on the field of battle, he has taken the Empire in his hands.
Of course, his solemn march brings him back to Paris, the new Rome
of the masters and the students. His triumph, however, is even greater
than that of the emperors of the ancient world because it is not
focused on one city but instead the whole body of the kingdom,
including its most distant extremities, partakes of it through an
intimate communion. It is like a deep, an irresistible irrigation of
glory. "A single victory gives birth to a thousand triumphs ... in every
town, village, castle." In this unanimous joy, one even sees the estates
of society blend with each other: "All conditions, all fortunes, all
professions, all sexes, all ages sing the same hymns of joy." For a
time, even the differences in dress, which at that epoch manifested the
diversity of social positions and which truly classified people, fade
away: "Knights, bourgeois, peasants, all shine under scarlet cloth."
Uniformly covered with a coat of triumphant crimson, they are thus
all equal. This, to the great surprise of the rustic who is amazed to be
dressed like an emperor: "He thinks that the man himself is
changed." The victory has indeed changed the man for a moment. It
has modified the meaning of rites, transformed the festival of the
harvest into a festival of liberty, of equality, of fraternity - the first
national celebration. And this is not a disturbance of the cosmic
order, its subversion, the fruit of an evil intention as that of Otto had
been, but on the contrary, a blessing from heaven.
For a time brief as that ~ll festivals, a perfe~societL~_ realize4,
that of the elect. Throu~hl~he_ secon narrative of Bouvines fits
Into very ancient eschatological war!'OFtliiiiK:'ng.]:pe yt~
new baptism. It has washed away sin, this pollution which justifies
inequality and the exploitation of laborers by the others. The favor of
the Lord, the bravery of the sovereign, have turned the kingdom into
a kind of new-found paradise. The parade that follows Bouvines does
indeed celebrate the Capetian monarchy but it also celebrates the
nation and, even more, the alliance of the one with the other. So much
so that "it was not possible to know if the King loved his people more
than the people loved its King. In this regard, there was a sort of
loving emulation, and one wondered which of the two was dearer to
the other, in which of the two love was stronger, so tender was the
affection uniting the one to the other with perfectly pure bonds."
After Philip Augustus died in peace in the middle years of the
thirteenth century, for thirty, forty, fifty years the memory of the
158 THE LEGEND
event remained very sharp. It is then that it was decided to put on
the gate of Arras the inscription which added Bouvines to the long
series of victories won over the German sovereigns by the kings of
France who were Charlemagne's true heirs. Jhere was still interest iq
the b~~. More narratives were produced but the imag..st.h.at-.thtlf
~trallsmit!ing v\ms...h~lJJ11ing mgre and ..I.ll.QL~~iIEtOrted. These
accounts exaggerated much more than William had alk)Wea himself
to do in the Philippiad. Thus Richer, a monk at Senones, in the
Vosges Mountains, reports in the chronicle he compiled between
1253 and 1264 that Emperor Otto had brought with him 25,000
cavalry, 80,000 foot soldiers, and a multitude of wagons loaded with
arms and supplies, and that 30,000 of his men died or were captured
on that day. But - oh miracle! - there were only two casualties on the
French side, a knight and a sergeant. According to the chronicle of
Saint-Martin of Tours which goes up to 1225 and was written by the
Franciscan brother Thomas, superior of Tuscany, who had traveled
extensively in France in the company of Saint Bonaventure, and who
was writing in 1278, it was not one against three, but one against ten
that the French king's army had fought. Of all the influences acting on
the very malleable substance of memories, the most compelling one
came from Saint-Denis. The work of Philip Mousket was deeply
. influenced by it. In the chronicle which he rhymed in French around
1240, this amateur coming, from a family of aldermen of Tournai
makes much of war cries. Each of the leaders has his. Around Otto,
they yell "Rome;" around Philip, "Montjoie-Saint Denis," and the
utterance of these three words alone is enough to magically break
down the Flemish troops: with this cry, the strong all of a sudden
become weak, the brave become cowards; "this word has killed and
doomed them." As soon as the Oriflamme is held up:
It seemed to them that Saint Denis
Over it has a dragon placed
To devour and slay them.
The fulgurant beast is not anymore to be found in the camp of evil ?ut
in that of Philip, and this time it is blessed. It was also from Saint-
Denis that Richer of Senones drew his information, indirectly
however, through the intermediary of one of i~s branches, a prior~ in
the neighborhood of Richer's monastery. Consequently, the recollection
is even more muddled: we find amongst the companions of the French
King a Count of Normandy and a Count of Brittany. This source also
certainly explains the role the Oriflamme plays in Richer's n~rrativ~.
Philip Augustus looks around for someone to entrust WIth this
standard of which it is said that it had not been taken out of the royal
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 159
treasury' since the time of Charlemagne: "Who wants to carry the
honor of France?" The Duke of Burgundy proposes a knight. He
is very pure because he is very poor: in order to buy a horse and join
the host he has mortgaged all his land. He is Galon of Montigny. The
remainder of the account of the battle then entirely rotates around the
sacred banner and nhe one who holds it. Rather than carrying it, he is
carried along by it. Nothing else is worthy of being looked at, neither
the barons, nor even the King. T-here is no more duel, only a chain of
exploits by, the Oriflamrne which alone takes care of the whole
matter, and, brutally at that. Indeed, it is no longer the emblem of a
liturgy, of a procession, that is being held in Galon's hands, but rather
an avenging and cruel weapon, The red silk thirsts for fresh blood and
we see the standard becoming a pike, piercing through and through
the body of the Count of Flanders, coming out of the wound redder
and dripping. It plunges into him again and again, and then resumes
its rampaging course and aims for Otto, splits up the press, arrives at
the Emperor before anyone else. The Oriflamme then disperses the
whole of the camp of evil, and it is by it alone that the victory is finally
won.
This sort of nonsense is nothing but the embroidery of adventure
stories. What we need to note, however, is that the myth keeps on
getting richer but wi ." " to the
.ll1onarchic srm.£.ol. Two innovations thus enter into the core of t e
narratives' of this period. They each add either one or two specific
ritual gestures to the liturgy. preliminary to the battle, gestures that
express more clearly the alliance between the sovereign and the
chivalry serving 'him. The first adds to the importance of the King's
sacred function: that which in the original ceremonial was only
preliminary purification appears transformed into a eucharistic
celebration, and we see King Philip adopt Melchisedech's pose. The
germ of this development comes from one of the small picturesque
details which adorned the original account: in the shade of an ash-
tree, at the time that he was warned of the attack, the King had been
taking refreshment by eating slices of bread which he had soaked in
wine. Philip Mousket was . the first to embellish this a little , to
solemnize it: the king's bowl becomes a "goblet of fine gold," thus a
kind of chalice. But twenty' years later, around 1260, ~t is the Minstrel
of Reims who definitely gives the narrative a new turn. He was an
anonymous songster who, to entertain his audience of nobles in the
city of the coronations, drew a pleasing picture of Bouvines. First of
all, as it was still morning, it is an entire mass that Philip comes to
hear in the chapel located ahead of the bridge - a pontifical mass sung
for him by the Bishop of Tournai - and he listens to it fully armed and
 160 THE LEGEND
in his armor. At the end of it, the two elements, the bread and the
wine, are brought to him. He has the bread sliced, picks up a pie~e,
dips it in the wine and eats it. He then addresses those aroun~ him
with these words: "I beg my loyal friends who are here to eat with me
in memory of the twelve apostles who drank and ate with our Lo~d.
And if one of you is thinking of wickedness and treachery, let him
stay away." Before the passion which is being prepared for,. before the
test the tribulations, the sacrifice offered for the salvation of the
people, the King imitates the Lord's Last SUQPer in which. he tak~..9.!1
the roleof Jesus. Through the gestures of the commumon, he also
attempts to tighten better than ever the bounds of the gro~p, to
assemble the peers around his person. He fears Judases, he alms to
unmask them. Enguerrand of Coucy receives the first slice of bread
from the hand of the celebrant. Then the presumed traitor, Gaucher,
the Count of Saint-Pol, presents himself: "the King suspected him on
account of evil gossip." He too does not fear to eat and, eyes fixed on
the King's, assures Philip that he will indeed see who will be the
traitor today. Then it is the turn of the Count of Sancerre, of all the
barons after him: "There was such a press that one could not get to
the hanap." . how, in this passage of.the various versions of the event, the change
The meaning of the second embellishment is not as clear. ~vlden~ly,
the primary intention is to exalt the crown, and t~us thIS. flou~I~h
could well have originated, like so-many others, at Saint-Denis, Ph~hp
Mousket had already inserted the crown into the prayer that the King
offers to heaven after the noon collation. He sets it there, squarely in
the middle. After first invoking Jesus Christ, Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, Philip begs to be freed from evil along with all ~hose. who have
followed him on foot or on horseback. But what he primarily expects
from heaven is that it protect his crown. This is also what he asks of
Saint Denis: have not the Kings of France, ever since Charlemagne,
given themselves to him, put themselves into his patronage?
You must protect the crown
,. Because each king gives you servitude
I
Through it, as Charlemagne wanted
I am your homme en domaine'
Protect my honor and my right
You must ... 2
Finally, the Virgin Mary is begged to make sure that "the crown will
not be stolen that day."
1 That is, the King is in the seigniory of the saint, is his homme de corps,
his serf.
2 As the lord owes it to his vassal.
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BIRTH OF THE MYTH 161
In truth, this concern is not in the least surprising. Novelty lies
elsewhere, in a very specific point where some narratives, in order to
make the spectacle more striking, locate the insignia of royalty on the
field of battle itself. This is as if Philip Augustus, having foreseen long
before that the duel would be held in the course of this campaign, had
decided, upon leaving> Paris, to bring along the symbol of his power,
to take it out of the royal treasury at the same time as Charlemagne's
banner, as if he had wanted the whole of the battle ceremonial to be
centered around this object, as if the King had chosen complete self-
effacement, leaving the main role to the crown and making of it the
stake not only of the single combat which was to occur in the battle,
but also of a preliminary contest, of a sort of competition open to all
the knights of the Capetian host. In front of them, just before the
moment of truth, the sovereign humbly acknowledges that he is
perhaps not the most worthy to wear this emblem and to defend its
honor. If a better champion should present himself, the crown should
be given to him. This last and remarkable manipulation of the
recollection of Bouvines has as its framework Philip Augustus's
harangue spoken at the start of the combat. It is worth examining
becomes perceptible and gradually accentuates itself.
In Philip Mousket's account, this movement is pnly initiated. The
King speaks, but only to affirm solidarity with 'his knights. This
resembles the passage in Flandria generosa: "Knights, I will follow
you / And go with you everywhere." He means to tell the warriors
who accompany him that he does not regard them as the simple
instruments of his action but rather as true friends; they will find him
at their side through all dangers. However, they should protect him
well because he is the King of France. As a good sovereign who will
not fail to share the profit of the encounter with them, he has the right
to their service "with no faltering." Or rather, he has right to their
protection. The knights, these auxiliaries, are thus called upon to
become the guardians of his body, because this body is royal.
However - and here is zhe decisive feature, well placed at the
beginning of the homily - his body is a body like all others and no
better, which means that he must be carefully watched over, he must
be prevented from taking too many risks alone; it is dignity alone
which clothes this perishable flesh.
Lords, I am but a man alone.
Whatever I might be, I am King of France
Guard me you must. . . .
Richer of Senones goes further along the same path. Philip begins
162 THE LEGEND
by talking to the knights, "flowers of France, honor of the royal
crown," in similar terms: "You see me bearing the crown. However,
because I am a man like you, I can only bear it if you support me."
But here a switch in the scene causes the whole tone to change: "I am
King," continues Philip. Then taking the crown from his head - thus
he had it on, at this solemn hour, and the preparations for the battle
then take on a completely different look, that of the greatest
solemnities of royal liturgy, of the most sumptuous shows of majesty
- he presents it to those around him. "I want," he tells them, "you all
to be king." (Is this the memory in the priest-king's mind, or rather in
that of Richer of Senones, of Saint Peter's First Epistle calling upon all
the faithful to share in the kingship and the priesthood of Christ?)
"Without you, I cannot rule the kingdom anymore." Through this
masterful offertory, which is also a gesture of communion, but this
time in the responsibilities of a shared office, the sovereign, at the
moment of an ultimate effort, calls upon the order of chivalry to
conclude a contract with him. The fatherland is in danger; the enemy
is in our countryside; if we stick together we can beat him and then
return with a common victory and glory to our housescour wives, our
sons, our daughters, whom the others wanted to murder. Instantly,
there is a unanimous burst of acclamation, of pledges of obedience.
And the King can then conclude: "Lords, you are all my men and I am
your Sire, whomever I might be." This is like the dit [the "said"],
the judgment pronounced at an assembly of the court.
The harangue starts differently in the account by the Ministrel of
Reims, with the King calling upon not the somewhat cold loyalty 'a
monarch can expect of his subjects but the devotion of the vassal.
This gives the speech a totally different stress. Philip is the best
seignior, more generous than anyone else, and is beloved because of
his gifts: "I have much loved you and brought you great honor, and
given you largely of what was mine. I have never wronged or failed
you but I have always led you rightfully. In the name of God, I beg
you all today to protect my body and my honor, and yours as well"-
by giving to the seignior who has never failed his duties the service of
military aid that they had all promised through homage and the
pledge.
After this, the theme which had already begun to take shape in
Philip Mousket's narrative is adopted and amplified as the crown
enters the scene: "If you think that the crown would be better served
by one of you, I agree to it and want it with good heart and good
will." The step has been taken: that which was only a statement
of humility is prolonged into a mimicry of abdication. The danger of
the hour imposes a redistribution of all the roles. The battle is about
BIRTH OF THE MYTH 163
to start. Royal dignity is about to be ventured in this hazard. The
danger is such that they must pick the most valorous man to defend
the colors of France. Thus begins what looks like an electoral
process.
But what follows is even more remarkable. There is no turmoil in
the audience, not a single hint of perplexity can be found in it. It is
obviously evident to all the onlookers that the most valorous can only
be Charlemagne's descendant: "All the barons cried from pity and
said: Sire, for God's sake, we do not want any king but you. Ride
bravely against your enemies; we are ready to die with you." This is
another inversion: in preceding versions, it is the King who said "we
will die together." The promise, this time, comes from the knights.
With these words, the pact is truly sealed.
Brother Thomas adds a last detail to the dialog of the sovereign and
the ordo of the warriors. It is no longer to the great vassals, to the
barons that the king is speaking, but directly to the parva militia, to
the crowd of poor knights, and he addressed them as his
commilitiones, his combat comrades. Of course, he dominates them,
and from a great height, but only because of the royal title. In truth,
many are stronger in body and braver than him. It is then that the
sovereign takes in his hands the down that he is wearing for the
honor of all. This time, we see him divest himself of it entirely by
putting it on the ground. He returns to the rank and finally asks the
question: "Do you want to defend it? I will die alone if you abandon
me." The answer from the assembled warriors is the same as
previously: "Take back the crown. We will give our lives for the
defense of the kingdom." ~
All the various alterations of the setting aim to show that the King's
body must not be confused with the function he assumes, a function
which takes on a concrete appearance with the diadem of noble
metal, the object which does not die, which is untouched by
corruption. The evolution bringing about the slow transformation of
the monarchy in France was calling, around the middle of the
thirteenth century, for words and gestures of this type - also depicted
in many other places, notably in the decorations of cathedrals -
which signified more vigorously the atemporal and super-eminent
value of monarchical dignity. However, what are we to make of the
humble manners, of the simulated auction by this new Aeneas who
pretends that he renounces all his prerogatives, that he wishes to lose
himself in the crowd of simple squires? What meaning should we give
to the illusory self-effacement of a man who knows himself to be so
well impregnated by the absolute power of the unction of coronation,
a man who is; moreover, the latest flowering of the Tree of Jesse
 164 THE LEGEND
1 BIRTH OF THE MYTH
whose genealogical roots lose themselves far into the times of
Merovingian tribalism, this descendant of dozens of kings, who
pretends to bow his head in front of braver, more agile, less short-
winded knights? What should we make of a posture so contradictory
to the majesty which is being so insistently affirmed at a time when
the dynastic spirit is steadily becoming stronger in the House of
France, when, in those very same years, the title alone of king's son is
beginning, of itself, to make its bearer untouchable and to fill all those
bearing it with a bouquet of virtues, with this magical valor which
predestines one to rule?
Did the authors of these narratives, responsible for these additions,
have at the back of their minds the idea of contesting the claims of the
grandsons of Philip Augustus? Should we see the last burgeoning of
the legend as obliging ornamentation through which professional
writers such as the Minstrel of Reims were aiming to please a public
of rebellious aristocrats? Were these writers, in order to better earn
their living, making themselves the spokesmen of what could be
called a feudal ideology? Were they trying to flatter the good
Maecenases, the dukes and the counts, the peers of France? But if this
was the case, why make the bid go down, why lower the competition
down to the bottom stratum of chivalry, down to the parva militia of
the young adventurers? And for which Maecenase could the monk of
Senones have been writing?
I believe w,e need to look elsewhere for the significance of this
symbol. Could not its function instead be that of expressing more
strongly that Bouvines has saved the French monarchy? What indeed
does Philip Augustus act out when he puts his crown on the ground, if
not his own death? He must die so that he can immediately be reborn.
Thus is . mediately re-crowned and~ted-lor
vi The crown has touc ed the earth, this eriiIe s~s
to d a ew ener ro It. ne coUid have aouD'ted the king's
chances. After all, he is only a man, and neither the youngest nor the
handsomest, nor the most expert at arms. He must plunge himself
into his knights as into a bath of youth; he must disappear for a
moment, he must drown in them, so that he can reappear as if
. I purified by this submersion into waters brimming with 'effervescent
valor and youthful spirit. And then he is also renewed, reaffirmed,
invigorated by this other symbolic gesture: the clamor of the
warriors, the cry they yell together to refuse unanimously to take
away his title, to affirm that only one man, himself, has the right to
bear it, not because he is stronger than the others, but because the
blood of the ancient kings flows in his veins. The narrative of the
!'
.
11
l
!
;
Minstrel of Reims does not pander to a nostalgia for baronial
L
I
165
independence but, on the contrary, like the Couronnement de Louis,
it aims to proclaim Capetian legitimacy.
--Cod will renderh'is judgment within the hour. Who can tell if the
powers he has delegated to Philip in the past, thirty-five years ago on
the day of coronation, are still valid? Who can tell if God still looks
upon the king as his true lieutenant? The battle is essentially just the
wait for an answer to this primordial question. It will show whether
God is still making the same choice. And this question is asked at a
decisive moment of dynastic history: it concerns the right of a
sovereign who, being well assured of hereditary tradition, is the first
of his line not to have found it necessary in his lifetime to share the
royal power with his eldest son. Battle champel, ordeal, Bouvines
must be seen as a confirmation. ~~d, it is a new coronation, not
with th~lLfrom the~y ph~!-~itb....b.lo...Qa:tne pUrIfymg blQod
w11iCliSome will soon sef.1J:QV\T over the Oriflamme.
Li"h the first, this second coronation muS;:-be preceded by
consultation with the nobility. In the past, when all the great vassals
of the kingdom were standing assembled in the cathedral of Reims,
the crown had already been deposited in front of them. The one who
was to wear it had previously solicited their votes. They had all
responded, like their ancestors who used to raise up on a shield the
long-haired king - because he was long haired and thus of true
lineage. The order of the warriors had expressed its agreement by
acclaiming the one whom the bishops were about to crown. They had
yelled at the top of their voices that he was the true one, the best one,
and that they would follow him in the midst of combat to protect his
body, that, if need be, they would give their lives for him. The knights
of Bouvines do just that. What is added to the mid-thirteenth century
accounts of the battle is not a concession to feudal rancor, no:;
gratuitous ornamentation, nor parody. Rather, it is a very serious
expression, through recourse to the most dramatic effects, of th
allegiance, at a time of acute dang..er, to the priest-king ready to Qffer
)imself as victim like Tesus had done and ~o, like Him, had just
distributed the host, and also of the allegiance given the knight-king
bythe whole of the chivalry of the kingdom. .
Thus is completed the erection of the legend of Bouvines into a
myth of natiQn and mQnarchy united. It is a monarchy supported by
~e orders of society, assembled into a close-knit harmony for
the good of the peace and glory of GQd. FQr a long time, the Capetian
had been able to count on the support of those who pray and those
who toil: he was their protector. But it was still necessary for the
warriors, in turn, to assure him of their support in a most solemn
manner. ~uring the reign of the sainted king who is shown rendering
166 THE LEGEND
justice beneath oak trees and visiting the sick, Richer, the anonymous
narrator of Reims, and soon after Brother Thomas, all place the great
scene of unity on the very field of a battle.
This is a late outcome, occurring shortly before the moment when
the memorr of the victory is about to pe decisively scattered in the
imaginings of the songsters of history, before being carried away,
under the pen of a John des Pres d'Outremeuse, into the hurly-burly
of a mad opera, a carousel of the four brothers Aymon, into
delirium's own circus.
3 Translator's note: In French, imaginaire. The rendering here of this
difficult word as "imaginings" has been adopted from Arthur Goldhammer's
translation of Georges Duby, The Three Orders (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL, 1980).
Resurgences
On the threshold of the fourteenth century the name "Bouvines"
becomes rapidly erased from memory. The accounts of the history of
France which were composed then still celebrated King Philip. But
rather than"Augustus," they were now calling him "the Conqueror"
for having taken Normandy and Anjou, these riches. This was what
mattered. They also said that he had vanquished Otto, but without
mentioning Bouvines. They were not willingly speaking of battle in
the context of Philip VI, of John the Good. Battles were something
others were now winning: the kings of England, the real enemies of
the kingdom. As to the Emperor, he was the good 'Cousin of the King
of France and the Teutons were not hated so much any more.
However, the fading of the memory stems mostly from the fact that
the figure of Philip Augustus has by then been eclipsed by that of Saint
Louis, his grandson who had become for ever more the great man of
the lineage, not through the success of arms but through sainthood,
through alhhe edifying acts reported of him - that he loved the poor
like Francis of Assisi and Jesus, that he fed lepers with his own hands,
helped build Royaumont, wore a cilice under his shirt - through
martyrdom, through his death in front of Tunis for the salvation of
the whole people. Like the vanquished kings, the new Christendom
expected other signs of election in addition to victories. The traces of
Bouvines were fading away. They were to remain almost invisible for
a long time to come.
We see them reappear in the seventeenth century, at the moment
when history begins to be written in a different way as a result of
careful re-reading of the old chronicles, when the long scholarly quest
for all the traces of the past is initiated. Guillaume Marcel, in his
Histoire des origines et des progres de la monarchie [rancaise suivant
l'ordre des temps, whose four volumes were published in Paris in
168 THE LEGEND
1686, only gives a short sketch of the battle. Like so many of the
t RESURGENCES
vignettes which were to ornament school books in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, he does not show much more than a king, full of
courage, thrown to the ground, who hurls himself back at the
adversary and puts him to flight. In contrast, nine long pages are
devoted to the event in Mezeray's Histoire de France depuis Faramond
[usqu'a maintenant of 1643. He follows closely the Grandes
Chroniques de France (that is, the account of William the Breton),
curiously adds that John Lackland proposed to the Miramolin of
Africa that the latter should do homage to him, and inflates the
coalition's troops to 150,000 men. He does not write a single word
about the Sunday truce; in his time the taboo had fallen into oblivion
and no one thought of interrupting the noble game of war on the
Lord's Day. What attracts him, what he puts at the center of the
narrative, is the scene of the crown to which he adds more details.
The King of France "had deposited his golden scepter and crown on a
portable altar set up in the full view of his army and, raising his voice
and his right hand, exclaimed: 'French lords and all you generous
soldiers who are ready to risk your life for the defense of this crown, if
you should judge that there is one amongst you who is more worthy
than I, I will gladly give it to him and resign, as long as you are ready
to preserve it in its entirety and not let these excommunicates
dismember it.' The whole army, very moved by these generous words,
yelled the following acclamations: 'Long and eternally live and rule
Philip, long live King Augustus, and may the crown remain his
forever: we will preserve it for him against all at the cost of our
lives.' " Then, the" August," the "most valorous and ardent knight in
the world," fights like a lion. The lords, against his will, had enclosed
him in the wall that they were forming but he "could not be stopped
by the gentlemen who were taking care of him; he burst out like a
torrent which, after being restrained for a while, charges and breaks
everything in its path."
The culture of the Counter-Reformation has thus seen King Philip
as an angry Roland. It dresses him Roman style, and remains
attentive to the invented gestures of an alliance between the monarch
and the gentlemen. According to it, the French are now fighting one
against a hundred; it believes that "the number of dead was
incredibly high," but it does not retain a single word of the popular
rejoicing. Rescued, touched up, fixed, the traces were to be taken up
"as is" by Velly in 1770, by Anquetil in 1839.
The true rejuvenation of the recollection dates from the July
Monarchy. It was called for by the romantic taste for medievalism,
1,
but also because the accounts of the battle provided a source of
169
arguments to the adherents of an ideology of bourgeois monarchy.
First, Guizot made use of them in his Cours d'bistoire moderne,
republished in 1840, which shows Philip Augustus as the first of the
French sovereigns to have conferred upon the monarchy "this
character of intelligent benevolence active for the betterment of the
social state." This is why "the monarchy was becoming national,"
triggering "in the thought of the peoples" an enthusiasm for "the
progress it engendered in society." And, of course, he refers to the
triumphant parade of the winners of Bouvines: "look how a paternal
monarch who defends the interests of the bourgeoisie can be popular
amongst honest workers, laboring at enriching themselves." When,
thirty-five years later, the same Guizot tells the history of France to
his grandchildren, he explains to them the importance of the militia of
the communes, who foreshadowed the national guard; the victory is
"the work of the king and the people" through this beneficial "union
of the classes" which "on that day together, and outside and above
the feudal host," made the French nation and monarchy rise in a
single movement.
It is not surprising to find that Michelet has looked upon the same
sources completely differently. For him, William the Breton's account
is "altered by flattery." In the final resort, "the battle of Bouvines, so
famous and so national,. does not seem to have been a very large
action." It resulted in the strengthening of the odious alliance
between the throne and the altar. Philip was but a puppet
manipulated by the priests, -an instrument of obscurantism, too
submissive to the hypocritical Pope with the bloodied hands who had
ordered the extermination of a people whose Catharism was the
expression of all the hopes of freedom. Otto appears as much less
weak, brushing off the excommunications, and King John knew how
to keep his .clergy in check, how to prevent it from doing too much
harm. The leaders of genuine profound history, those who stood at
the forefront of the great current of light, were not at that hour on the
side of the French knights, those -brutes. Bouvines was a victory of
bigotry and seigniorial oppression. Michelet awards the crown of
heroism to the veterans, the last bastion of the defense, the
mercenaries; those workers issuing from the people who were doing
their job well: "the glory of courage but not of victory belonged to the
Brabancons routiers; these old soldiers, numbering 500, refused to
surrender to the French and chose rather to be killed," this while the
knights were letting themselves be captured. The narrative of the
battle fits 0,11 one page.
When the event comes back to life in this way, it is Augustin
 1
170 THE LEGEND
Thierry who seems .the most lucid. However, he also extols the
indissoluble tie which, up to the Revolution, has united the monarchy
with the third estate. Expecting history to seek out "the root of the
interests, the passions, the opinions which move us," to pursue "in
the past the trace of those irresistible emotions pulling each,of us into
our various political parties, lifting up our spirits or misleading
them," Thierry aims to prove that "the middle class and the popular
classes were not born just yesterday." "If one chooses a period, not of
internal war but of foreign invasion, one will see that, when it comes
to self-sacrifice and enthusiasm, the last estate of the nation did not
remain behind." Thus at Bouvines "the 150 mounted sergeants from
the Soissons valley, all plebeians, engaged the battle, and the
bourgeois from the communes took up their position in the first
rank." Augustin Thierry is the first to extract from the traces of
Bouvines the feature which was to bring about the sudden and
ultimate resurgence of a complete section of lost memory, this within
the fever of nationalism, in the fanfares of enlistment, in the flapping
of unfurled flags, and for the comfort of all the poor devils who, one
hopes, will be heroes some day. Moreover, he is the first to call for a
methodological critique of the accounts, for the dissipation of the
legendary, so that the memories which feed the patriotism of the
young recruit will not be lies. "Reform must reach down to ... these
sorts of catechisms which are used in primary instruction. The kind of
works which are now generally used by the public usually combine
the greatest chronological veracity with the greatest imaginable
historical falsehood. In them, we find, spelt out in a brief and
peremptory manner, all the errors contained in the major works; and
so that falsehood could, so to speak, penetrate through all senses,
often numerous prints make a travesty in the most bizarre of
costumes of the principal scenes of history." This is the case with
"Philip Augustus, in sixteenth-century steel armor, depositing his
crown on an altar on the day of the Battle of Bouvines. I must stress
this last feature whose popularity in our country is a sort of historical
scandal. The act of a King publicly offering his crown and his scepter
to the more worthy is no doubt a very edifying act; but it is
extravagant to believe that such scenes have ever been acted out
outside theaters, And how well chosen is the moment for this outdoor
exhibition of all the royal regalia! It occurs at the instant when the
French army is unexpectedly attacked, and how well this act would
agree with King Philip's character, a man so skillful, so positive, and
so quick in making decisions! It is true that the first mention of this
bizarre anecdote is found in a contemporary chronicle, but it was
written by a monk who was then living outside the French kingdom,
RESURGENCES 171
deep in the Vosges Mountains, without any direct or indirect contact
with the important personages of his time. He was a man of
whimsical imagination, a friend of the marvelous, taking pleasure in
listening to extraordinary narratives and writing them down
unquestioningly." As early as 1848, the Petite Histoire de France a
l'usage des ecoles primaires, by F. Ansart, a teacher at the Royal
Saint-Louis College, was criticizing Mezeray and was expressing
doubt about the story of the crown deposited on the altar. However,
when Augustin Thierry in his Lettres sur l'histoire de France called
for a fight against anachronism and for the correction of the
deviations of memory, this story was already everywhere being
brought back to -life, exploited. Bouvines had to be celebrated, its
lessons had to be learnt.
In 1833, the Societe d'Emulation of the city of Cambrai had
awarded the gold medal along with 200 francs, promised for the best
essay in the history of this northern department, to M. Lebon,
knight of Saint-Louis, officer of the Legion d'honneur. Lebon's
primary intention had been to extract from the accounts of the battle
the information they contained on the art of combat. He also wanted
to redeem the honor of the people of Lille: they had not committed
treachery by welcoming their compatriots, the Flemings; they were
Ferrand's subjects and resentment blinded. Philip Augustus when he
devastated their town. But this study is mainly interesting in that it
shows what traces of .the event still survived at that time in the
consciousness of the people of the area. Very few things, indeed:
confused memories of massacres, of dead heroes, associated with
"parallel mounds of earth in the shape of tombs," with some "rusted
old metal" debris which surfaced on major ploughing days. These are
the vague and tattered remnants of memories which are always
drifting over the theaters of ancient battles.
In 1845, in the course of a session of the archaeological conference
chaired by M. de Gaumont, the participants had the idea of having a
monument raised in that place. But only one item, the date 1214, was
inscribed on the 'obelisk: even though "the heart of our Flemish
populations has become French," it was deemed necessary to take
pains not to offend the always touchy Flemings who were still
thought to have been the principal losers in the affair. After 1870,
everything changed; the German Emperor again became the sole
adversary of the King of France. Defeat was the major cause of the
sudden revival of all the memories of Bouvines. In 1879, it was
decided that the obelisk was not enough; a set of stained-glass
windows for the church was commissioned to celebrate the defenders
of the fatherland. H. M. L. Delpech, a scholar known for his work on
 172 THE LEGEND
military history, was assigned the mission of guiding the painters. The
curious instructions that he wrote stigmatize the hereditary enemy,
the German. "Otto had a hypocritical, brutal, selfish character";
below the figure of the King of France who has just decided to attack
will be shown "the German horsemen breaking their assault,
tightening up their ranks and passing in front of the King in a
sideways march, in the attitude of hatred contained by fear." In the
central scenes will be shown' "the crown of France placed under the
direct protection of the altars," the whole assembled nation below
the hands of the sovereign bestowing blessings. If the painters were to
be reluctant "to represent a bishop breaking people's heads, we could
avoid this difficulty by representing the moment when Beauvais,
having already struck down Salisbury, turns him over to John of
I Nivelle." Finally, "without departing from historical verisimilitude,"
II
'. could we not set a scene at the end of the battle "of a sort of honor
f
I guard," a victory parade?
I Nine years later, a committee, presided over by General de
I ,1 Galliffet, aimed to glorify the battle even more brilliantly by "inviting
artists to represent its most beautiful episodes and the public to
contribute to the cost of the cult of this national remembrance."
E. Lavisse responded to the call, not with his deniers but with his
pen; "taking glory in soliciting for the work of commemoration of
this day," he rejoiced in the "opportunity given him to set this great
action into its diffused light, far from the crudeness of modern facts,
into the poetry of its dawn light," as he wrote in a major article for
the Journal des Debats, December 1888. We see the intervention of
"perfidious Albion's gold," but there is no doubt about it: the
evildoers come from the other side of the Rhine. "I have participated,"
writes Lavisse, "in a great national joy twenty-nine years ago, that of
a people happy to be the winner and to free another people with its
victory; then, I have known, eighteen years ago, a great national
sorrow." And this is indeed what motivates him, what makes him
admit that there was some good "in the policies of our kings which
united us in obedience and' in the cult of French greatness"; but he
quickly qualifies his statement - his readers are from both sides - with
a homage to the "Revolution which has made us joint owners of the
,I fatherland. "
"
A short while previously, the Republic had started to teach French.
.' history, compulsorily and free of charge, to these "joint owners" in
their childhood, so that they would be well aware of the price of this
indivisible inheritance, and so as to hearten them. "Our fatherland
has a great need today of the devoted cooperation of all its children.
The teaching of our national history will contribute more than
RESURGENCES 173
anything else to giving it back a clearer and more precise
understanding of its past faults as well as of its future duties. May this
little book show to our unfortunate brothers of Alsace and Lorraine
that we still think of them and that we need to remember that the
hour is solemn, that the regeneration of a people must begin with the
education of its children, and that this is the price for France's
salvation" (P. Foncin, Textes et recits d'bistoire de France, premiere
annee, 1880). In these school books, Bouvines is insistently
represented as a victory of the people over feudalism, over this fatal
regime which caused the loss of national consciousnes~: "the
multitude of seigniories had in some ways destroyed the Idea of
fatherland. This idea, however, had not completely perished, the
blood of the French boiled over when they heard of the approach of
an army mostly made up of Germans" (G. Ducoudray, Histoire
elementaire de la France, 1884). Who did then "cause the enemy to be
stricken with discouragement"; who decided the victory? It was the
communal militia. Let the poorest peasants be persuaded of this: they
will also be victorious as long, as they show themselves not only
obedient, polite, respectful, honest toward their masters, but also as
courageous as were their ancestors. They will liberate Alsace and
Lorraine. The priests of the Christian schools also follow in these
footsteps, but they specify that it was the monarchy which had
created the communes and that these communes loved the monarchy.
At any rate, Bouvines becomes a manifestation of French
patriotism, second in rank only to Alesia. "It was the first national
victory," claims the Course taught by E. Lavisse (1894), "all the
classes of the nation, knights, clergy, communal militias, had
participated in the combat, and for the first time the whole of France
rejoiced in a triumph." It is definitely national unity that is the object
here, a unity centered around the people which has become sovereig~.
"The victory of Bouvines is due to the courage of the brave bourgeois
of the communes" affirms without further ado the Cours d'histoire Cl
l'usage de l'enseignement primaire by D. Blanchet and J. Periard in
1901.
\
The tone becomes more aggressive after the turn of the twentieth
century: "This was our first victory over the Germans" coolly states
C. Calvet's Course in 1903 - the year that Pope Leo XIII benevolently
authorizes the transfer of the relics of Saint Fulgence and Saint
Saturnine, the generous gift of the Bishop of Anagni, to the Church at
Bouvines. This church could then become, as Canon Salembier was to
hope four years later, one of those "rites of patriotic pilgrimage which
are at the same time places of adoration, of prayer, of thanksgiving to
 174 THE LEGEND
the God of battles." The retired Captain H. de Malleray fulfilled this
pilgrimage in 1905. Upon returning from a pleasant and pious
ground-sniffing tour of old killing theatres, he passes through
Bouvines and becomes excited: "Such a rare pleasure it is for a soldier
to see the national idea being born, grow, and expand on the battle
field ... already all impregnated, saturated with this hatred of foreign
domination, with this energetic will to preserve the native land....
Dear France, dear country, you will probably yet experience
dangerous times. You are too beautiful not to inspire desire, too
wealthy not to arouse covetousness." But too niggardly as well; the
church of Bouvines has yet to receive all the stained-glass windows:
"Because of the lack of money, the work was stopped some years
ago." It must be resumed. Why not dedicate this national monument
"to the glorification of the anonymous and courageous fighters for
whom Michelet has long ago already asked for a word, a tear, a
remembrance?" This captain who reads Michelet loves his men:
"Could we not build in France a kind of expiatory monument, such
as a military pantheon dedicated to obscure and forgotten heroes?"
Poetry also comes on the scene at this time - and what poetry! In
1879 Father Longchamp of the Company of Jesus had composed a
sanctimonious and picturesque trilogy with a chorus in honor of
Bouvines, of France, of the "Holy Church and the Holy Fatherland,"
of the "field of honor" where everything becomes noble and where
"there is no ugliness." A. Fraisse, who takes up the theme in 1911,
shows Philip Augustus as battling feudalism, blanketing the country
with charters of freedom. But the vogue for Bouvines at that time is
far from reaching the extent of that for Joan of Arc. This is perhaps
~ , because here, despite everything, the common people and the nation
,
"
in arms rub shoulders too closely with the Church, the nobility, and
finally the King. It is difficult to glorify the first without somehow
celebrating the others. Things are simpler with the Maid. Daughter of
the people, and moreover coming from Lorraine, she has what is
required to warm the hearts of both the Peguys and the Derouledes.
There is one difficulty, however: those she drives out of France are the
English, and we are now in the era of the Entente Cordiale. Bouvines
has an advantage here. There is no ambiguity in it: it had to do with
the Teutons. They were beaten and ran away like rabbits.
, The date of the seventh centenary of the battle nears. In 1913,
,, Germany had magnified that of the battle of Leipzig, had erected a
,I commemorative monument. And is not Great Britain about to
celebrate Waterloo? What is France waiting for? A new committee is
set up; at the beginning of June 1914 it organizes a ceremony at Saint-
..~ Denis: next to the tombs of the Kings of France, an actor-raises the
I
RESURGENCES 175
Oriflamme. The committee considers erecting on the battlefield a
memorial that would be less insignificant than the obelisk and which
would speak louder. It would represent "a fortress from medieval
times dominated by a colossal statue of Philip Augustus astride a
battle horse, the living incarnation of the fatherland." It would be the
statue of one of those kings who have made France - and immediately
the committee demands a celebration to be held at .Bouvines itself,
which is not very far from Sedan. The government of the Republic
hesitates, ends up by agreeing to it, under one condition, however: no
priest should be seen at the celebration. On June 27 the ed~torial of
the L'Echo de Paris establishes a parallel between Bouvines and
Leipzig thus: "Leipzig has created the artificial German unity in
which -the southern regions cannot come to an agreement with the
northern ones. Bouvines ensured the lasting French unity which has
endured from 1214 to 1914. In one of these battles of nations, the
winner fought three against one; in the other, one against three.
Which one is the more glorious? ... When we erect a monument on
this famous plain, all the universe should join us since there, as at
Tolbiac and at Poitiets, it was the cause of civilization which
triumphed." The next day, a Sunday, excursion trains departed for
Bouvines; a stand is set up near the bridge; the troops parade in front
of it; a descendant of the Bouvines combatants, a Mr de Montigny, is
seated on it; speeches, cantata, a banquet, a retreat with lit torches led
by the fleur-de-lys standard, fireworks. According to L'Action
Francaise, "it is a fact: from morning to night the idea of the King of
France reigned." They had yelled: "Long live Philip! Long live the
King!" Was this carnival of vengeance the locus of a unanimous
communion? Not quite: "a few hundred socialists who had on Friday
evening at Lille idiotically booed the military retreat organized in
remembrance of Bouvines" also came. L'Echo de Paris of June 29
deplores this and would like to open the eyes of these party-poopers:
"Alas! These poor people will never understand that this battle was
the triumph of the communes over Feudalism." And in response "to
the opponents - there were some - of the celebrations of Bouvines,"
Le Journal of June 30,produces the cultural argument: "From the
victory of national-liberation seven hundred years ago was born the
magnificent flowering of Medieval French civilization, the educator of
modern Europe."
This was the theme of the speech given from the stand at Bouvines
by the Permanent Secretary of the Academie Francaise, E. Lamy. He
had spoken of "the right of peoples and the future of civilization," of
a civilization to which ','feudal society was an obstacle." The France
of that time helped the bishops' efforts while in Germany, where
J

176 THE LEGEND
"they were hardly shocked if priests did not remain celibate," "the
pagan order of societies where religion was an instrument of the
people in power rather than their judge tended to become
established." But Philip Augustus's army was preparing to destroy
this feudal and Teutonic resistance. Facing the French was a
cowering, mute savagery: "This violence of a beast tensed up and
ready to pounce is only interrupted by the ferocious wish, the oath
.I Otto, Ferrand, and Renaud make to kill Philip Augustus, as well as by
I the cry of sensuality [the Permanent Secretary outdoes William the
Breton's prudishness], the 'Let us think of our ladies' uttered by a
Fleming." Only the Brabancons "save German honor." This victory
is that of intelligence over number, of the cavalry, agile and spirited,
against this weighty weapon, the infantry. But it is also like a miracle.
And thus brothers, we can hope yet. "This -is not the sole occasion
when our race has received this mysterious help: at the most decisive
hours, it has been lifted up over and over again by means which in
themselves seemed inadequate." "For our nation, as for any creature,
can there be a better glory than to be the fleeting servant [Lamy at this
point is running out of ways of sidestepping: the actual utterance of
the word 'God'] of immaterial wisdom?" This longing gaze directed to
clericalism and democracy was badly received by the members of the
royalist organization (the Camelots du roi) who had prepared the
celebration. Lamy, "one of the 363 whose victory on the morrow of
16 May had, Bismarcko juvente, definitively imposed on us this
beatified regime," was severely trounced by the Count of Lur-Saluces
and then by Charles Maurras in L'Action Francaise of July 8 and 12.
On this last date, the clergy had held its very own celebration at
Bouvines, for itself alone. The speaker was Monsignor Touchet, the
Bishop of Orleans, a man of prudence and at least as cunning as
, , Philip Augustus. Was he, a priest, about to glorify a battle? Not at all,
1
1
but rather "the austere grandeur of the values imposed by war ... and
what it sometimes obtains... : the independence of the soil of the
fatherland threatened or violated by unbearable foreign occupation.
Seen in this light, yes, the spectacle of Bouvines is more than just an
epic spectacle! It is the spectacle of a grandiose civic celebration.
Henry IV, Bonaparte, the Montagnards of 1893 would have
applauded it. We applaud it, we, bishops and citizens as much as
bishops, is it not so, Monsignors?" "Otto was but a penniless
mercenary. He was quite pleased with the opportunity of raiding a
wealthy country. The Germans have had it in their blood ever since
, ,
Tolbiac: they want to invade us each time they need to recoup their
fortune. It is true, though, that we have not failed to return the favor,
alternately winners, alternately losers. May God make the era of
RESURGENCES 177
these mortal struggles come to a close! However, if the arena ?as to
redden again, may the Lord remember that it is o,ur turn to, be WInners
rather than losers." France lives "for humankind and, In the final
analysis, for God. God is of this opinion. He has per~ormed mira,cles
rather than letting us be destroyed." But God first ~I~hes for u~ll?n.
The union of classes of, course - achieved paternalistically by lifting
up slightly those who are in the gutter. "Do you know what the,sc~ne
lacks to be complete? It lacks Philip calling to him one of these villeins
or-bourgeois who had just proved that their blood was as red. as that
of the others and dubbing him knight." This is the sacred uruon, the
union of Catholics. And the prelate ends by expressing his "absolute
hope for a definitive victory in a Bouvines of the. Chu~ch." L'A~tion
Francaise entirely failed to give an account of this twisted homily.
We know what happened three weeks later. The carnage of the First
World War wiped out whatever still survived of Bouvines. Af~er the
victory, silence fell in the Histories of France written for sch~olch~ldren.
This silence was not complete, but almost: only three lines In the
Course by Faubert and Huleux which conformed with the official
syllabus of 1923. And what they speak about is n?t ,the fightin,g but
the popular celebration, a feudal November 11.'ThIs IS the case In the
Histoire de France pour le Certificat d'Etudes by L. Brossole~te of
1935 which bears as subtitle: "The People rather than the Princes,
Civilization rather than Battles." At the same time, however, while
darkness was-falling on the other side of the Rhine, while in France
the War Veterans dreamed of a new order, A. Hadengue devoted to
the "creative victory" a sincere book, all aglow with the, s~me
enthusiasm which had in the past led Captain de Malleray to lyricism:
"The moral danger causes a new feeling to open up in the depth of
our people, and this feeling can only be cal~e~ by one wo~d:
patriotism. " Hadengue had been moved by the still Incomplete senes
of stained-glass windows in the church. He had been touched by an
,
old peasant's comments: "It was the Prussians who ~ad come to our
land before. So we mobilized. The lords and the little people got
together." Just as in the trenches.
General Weygand writes the preface for Hadengue's work. T~e
matter is very clear to him. What lesson can one ~raw ,fro~ this
battle? "The profound causes of France's salvation lie In the
determination and the character of the Leader." And here, we can
sense the shadow already beginning to take form. "What freshness
these 700-year-old lessons of Bouvines still hold tod~y, a~ter the
unprecedented struggle France has just undergone for ItS existence,
after a dearly acquired victory whose uncontestable, yet not
 178 THE LEGEND
completely pursued, results throw doubt in the mind of the winner!
And this at a time when the present leader of Germany is writing:
'F:ance has been the mortal enemy, the constant enemy, ever since the
t~l1rteenth century. We need to have it out with them, we need to set it
rIght!'". In fact, God, responding to Monsignor Toucher's wish , was
preparmg to respect the law of alternation. This time, it was the
"
1I Teutons' turn.
After 1945, Bouvines was completely forgotten. Today, school
teachers do not mention it any more. They are advised to go from the
crusades, the seigniors and the castles, the cathedrals, directly to Saint
Louis, the good king, the only Capetian figure offered to children's
~emories. In 1961, a Lotto game of twenty dates (Loto des Dates)
mcludes only two battles: Crecy and Marignan, but not Bouvines. In
the books written for high school, the victory is still thought to
deserve one page. Thus the Portes-Reynaud Collection, which
conforms to the 1970 official curriculum, contains a miniature (from the
fifteenth century). Why are the people rejoicing? The quote from
William the Breton will help the reader to make a guess. The student
is also asked to study "the disposition of the troops," and he is shown
a battle plan - but the German is absent from it: it'is Renaud of
Boulogne who faces the King of France. The Bardas Collection is
more generous: two pages here, out of 192. There is the same
description of the popular rejoicing - which is attributed to Rigord -
and the loser, according to the summary, is not the German Emperor,
but England. In the Encyclopaedia Universalis, Philip the Fair has his
e~try~ but not Philip ~ugustus. When J acques Le Goff finally presents
hIS history of the MIddle Ages from 1060 to 1330 in about two
thousand lines, he devotes not more than three of these to Bouvines
only reminding the reader that Otto IV "was defeated there by the
King of France, Philip Augustus," who received' "the tribute of
homage from the crowds gathered along his route." That is all.
We can well see why the last traces of the event are disappearing in
front of our very eyes. What place could the story of Bouvines hold in
the schooling of the children of a united Europe, in the' name of a
history which has rightfully and for so long fought to free itselffrom
the fetters of events? Our age chases' battles out of its memory and
justly so. And how could it remember there was once a time when
hea.ds of sta~e thought of measuring themselves one to one, putting
their power m the hands of God? In our days, indeed, we seldom see
power put itself at the mercy of the fate of 'combat or seek its
legitimacy in victory. The opposite is rather the case: the renown, true
or false, of dubious success is used as a pretext by captains, great or
RESURGENCES 179
small, to take power by force. When they hold it, they avoid
venturing it. The war they wage is shadowy. It shuns open combat; it
uses other means, more insidious, more efficacious, and which
definitely aim to destroy. But this does not prevent the generals, the
colonels, from claiming some acquaintance with the sacred. Invincible
tropisms still continue in our days to make the sword lean towards
the holy water. The smell of incense is pleasing to leaders. They can
often be seen in cathedrals, scanning the heavens for signs of election.
They too would not mind healing scrofula! I After the fact, they like to
invoke old victories perhaps so as to lighten, with the justification of
the atemporal and the magical, the somewhat heavy conscience they
nonetheless occasionally have about their ill-gotten tyranny. "The
God of battles does exist. The intentions and the will of men are
always overruled by the will of God who grants victories and triggers
defeats. God is not in the habit of abandoning just causes nor those
who serve him in good faith. If within this theological framework we
attempt to observe the military victories which constitute the pivots
of the history of the world, we will easily uncover the indices of the
designs of divine will. There is so little space between victory and
defeat, the circumstances of chance shift so much, the best engaged
battle can so easily be lost owing to insurmountable happenings: no
one can be certain that God's will is on his side." This was written by
a general: Francisco Franco in 1964. And on July 25, 1971, the day of
the feast of Saint James of Compostella, patron saint of Spain,
surrounded by the members of his cabinet and about twenty bishops,
kneeling in front of the statue of the saint, he speaks again. To say
what? "In the course of our crusade of liberation, we have noticed on
several occasions that the most decisive victories were won on the
days corresponding to the great festival days of Spain. This was the
case with the Battle of Brunete where, after several days of impasse,
victory came to us on the day of the feast of our patron saint. It could
be no other way when one fights for the Faith, for Spain and for
justice. War is more easily waged when one has God for an ally."
God. The god of holocausts and military parades. The god of order
restored. This great pale horse hovering one evening over the field of
death at Brunete had once hovered over Bouvines. And it hovers over
Guernica, over Auschwitz, over Hiroshima, over Hanoi, over every
hospital after every riot. This god too is not about to die. He always
acknowledges his own.
1 Translator's note: Allusion to the French and British monarchs' claim of
being able to heal a group of illnesses known at the time as scrofula.
 Appendices

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 Chronology

1163 Beginning of the building of Notre Dame of Paris.

I 1165 August 21. Birth of Philip Augustus.
Canonization of Charlemagne.
~
I c.1167 Birth of John Lackland.
! 1178 Papal mission in the Albi region.

I 1179 November 1. Coronation of Philip Augustus, Third Lateran

Council.
1180 April 28. Wedding of Philip and Isabel of Hainaut.
September 14. Death of Louis VII.
Treaty of Gisors. Foundation in Paris of the first college for
students.
1181-90 Chretian de Troyes composes Perceual.
1182 Philip expels the Jews.
Winter. Formation at Puy of the sect of the White Capes.
1185 Philip acquires Arras and the Vermandois.
1186 Renaud of Dammartin's father takes refuge with the King of
England.
1187 Saladin takes Jerusalem. The French King acquires Tournai.
September 5. Birth of Louis VIII.
1189 July 6. Death of Henry 11 Plantagenet.
Death of Isabel of Hainaut.
1190 July, 4. Philip Augustus and Richard Lionheart leave Vezelay for
the Holy Land.
Death of Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders.
 .'- = " . " " - = - - - - - - - - - - - - - r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
184 CHRONOLOGY
1191 July 13. Capture of Saint John of Acre.
July 21. Philip Augustus decides to return to France.
December 25. Philip Augustus is at Fontainebleau.
Philip Augustus receives the homage of Renaud of Dammartin for
the county of Boulogne.
1193 February. John Lackland does homage to Philip Augustus for the
Plantagenets' fiefs.
April 14. Philip Augustus marries Ingeborg.
1194 The episcopal assembly of Compiegne annuls the marriage of
Philip and Ingeborg.
March 20. Richard Lionheart returns to England.
May. Richard is reconciled with John Lackland.
July 3. Philip Augustus is defeated at Freteval,
Beginning of the work of rebuilding the cathedral of Chartres
which had been burnt.
Granting of the first privilege to the school masters of Paris.
1196 Philip Augustus marries Agnes of Meran.
Pope Celestin III annuls the Cornpiegne decision.
The Bishop of Beauvais is captured by Richard Lionheart.
Building of Chateau-Gaillard.
December. Election of Frederick 11.
1198 January 8. Election of Pope Innocent Ill.
September 20. Defeat of the French King's army near Gisors.
The Jews are allowed to return to the royal domain.
1199 April. Richard Lionheart designates John Lackland as his
successor.
June 24. Truce between Philip Augustus and Richard Lionheart.
November 27. John Lackland becomes King of England.
Preaching of the Fourth Crusade.
1200 January. Agreement between Philip and King John. Prince Louis
marries Blanche of Castille, King John's niece, who receives
Evreux as dowry.
January 15. Innocent III puts the interdict on the Kingdom of
France.
May 22. Peace of Goulet between Philip and John Lackland, who
renders homage. The Pope pronounces himself in favor of Otto
of Brunswick.
September 7. Philip Augustus acknowledges Ingeborg as his
spouse. Philip Augustus grants a privilege for the students of
Paris.
1201 November. Innocent III legitimizes Philip Hurepel, born at the
beginning of the year and who is betrothed to the daughter of
Renaud of Dammartin.
CHRONOLOGY 185
1202 April. Condemnation of John Lackland by the Court of France.
Count Baudouin of Flanders becomes a crusader.
1203 April 3. Murder of Arthur of Brittany.
1204 Death of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Mar~h 6. Capture of Chateau-Gaillard. Normandy is conquered.
ApT/I. Capture of Constantinople by the Latins.
The King of Aragon 'becomes a vassal of the Holy See.
1205 Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1206 October 26. Truce between Philip Augustus and John Lackland.
Dominic preaches in the Albi region. Francis of Assisi retires from
the world.
Start of the building of the portals of Chartres Cathedral.
End of "the Gesta Philippi Augusti by Rigord.
1207 October 1. Excommunication of Raymond of Toulouse.
Birth of Henry Ill.
First mention of the association of teachers and students of Paris.
1208 March 24. The Pope puts the interdict on the Kingdom of
England.
Murder of Philip of Swabia. Re-election of Otto of Brunswick.
1209 January 12. Murder of Pierre of Castelnau, pontifical legate to the
Albi region.
March. Ottorakes the oath at Spire.
June 18. Penance of Raymond of Toulouse.
July. Departure of the Albigensian Crusade.
Excommunication of John Lackland.
September 27. Imperial coronation of Otto.
1210 November. Otto excommunicated and deposed.
The reading of Aristotle's Metaphysics is forbidden in Paris
schools.
1211 Ferrand of Portugal marries Joan, eldest daughter of Baudouin,
Count of Flanders.
October. Frederick 11 elected king of Germany at Nuremberg.
Renaud of Dammartin fortifies Mortain and establishes relations
with John Lackland. .
Beginning of the reconstruction of the cathedral of Reims.
1212 January 22. Ferrand does homage to Philip Augustus for the
county of Flanders.
January 24. Ferrand gives up Aire and Saint-Omer.
May 4. Renaud of Dammartin does homage to John Lackland
and promises not to enter into any peace or truce with Philip
and Prince Louis.
~
!
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186 CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGY 187
Children's crusade. July 25. Frederick 11 crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle,
July 16. Las Navas de Tolosa. September-October. Negotiations between Philip Augustus and
November 19. Meeting of Frederick 11 and Prince Louis at the English barons.
Vaucouleurs. November 11. Meeting of the Lateran Council.
December. Frederick 11 is crowned at Mayence. 1216 May 21. Prince Louis lands in England.
Construction of the walls of Paris. July 17. Death of Innocent Ill.
1213 January. The Pope bans John Lackland from Christendom. October 19: D~ath of John Lackland. Henry III becomes King of
Prince Louis becomes a crusader. England.
April 8. Assembly of Soissons. The Count of Flanders refuses to Philip Hurepel marries Renaud of Dammartin's daughter.
participate in the British expedition. Philip Augustus calls Establishment of the Dominican Order.
Queen Ingeborg back to him. Peter of Courtenay is Emperor of Constantinople.
April 19. Convocation of the Fourth Lateran Council. 1217 May 20. Defeat of the Capetian army at Lincoln.
May 15. John Lackland submits to the Pope. September 11. Peace of Lambeth.
May 22. While at Gravelines, Philip Augustus, who was ready to
set sail for England, learns of King John's submission and 1218 Simon de Montfort's death in front of Toulouse.
decides to ravage Flanders. 1219 Prince Louis' second expedition to Languedoc.
May 30. Philip Augustus leaves Flanders after burning Damme. First Franciscan mission arrives in Paris.
May 31. Ferrand swears-to help John Lackland and not to make
peace with Phjlip without him and without Renaud of 1222 Philip Hurepel, dubbed knight, comes into possession of the
Dammartin. county of Boulogne.
July 20. Excommunication is lifted from John Lackland. 1223 July 14. Death of Philip Augustus at Mantes.
September 13. Battle of Muret. August 6. Coronation of Louis VIII.
October 13. John Lackland takes back as papal fiefs the Kingdoms
of England and Ireland. 1226 April. Treaty of Melun with the Countess of Flanders.
November 21. Agreement between Philip Augustus and the November 8. Death of Louis VIII.
Countess of Champagne. 1227 June. Ferrand 'of Flanders is set free.
1214 February 16. John Lackland lands at La Rochelle.
April. Philip Augustus leads the host to Poitou.
April 25. Birth of Saint Louis.
June 17. John Lackland enters Angers.
June -19. John Lackland sets siege in front of La Roche-aux-Moines,
July 2. John Lackland lifts the siege as Prince Louis nears.
July 15. John Lackland is at La Rochelle.
July 23. Philip Augustus leaves Peronne for Douai.
July 26. Philip Augustus is at Tournai.
July 27. BOUVINES.
September 18. Truce at Chinon between Philip Augustus and
John Lackland.
October 24. Agreement with Joan of Flanders.
Completion of the facade of the Laon Cathedral.
Philip Augustus grants a new port to the Parisian association of
water merchants.
1215 Prince Louis is in the Albi region.
April. Statutes of the University of Paris by Robert of Courcon,
June 15. John Lackland signs the Magna Carta at Runnymede.

!
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,.
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Geschiedenis, 1960.
VERBRUGGEN, J. F., De Krijgskunst in West Europa in de Middleeuwen (IX
tot beguin XIV euwen) (Ghent, 1954).

IV The Remembrance of Bouvines

CHON, F., "Monument de Bouvines," Bulletin de la commission historique
du Departement du Nord, 1866.
DELPECH, H., Notice a l'usage des peintres charges de la decoration de
l'eglise de Bouvines (Bar-le-Due, 1887).
FRAISSE, A., Bouvines, drame historique en cinq actes (Paris, 1911).
LAMY, E., Institut de France. Academic Prancaise. Septieme centenaire de la
bataille de Bouvines. Discours, 1914.
LAVISSE, E., "La bataille de Bouvines," Journal des Debats, December 1888.
LEBON, M., Memoire sur la bataille de Bouvines en 1214, enrichi de
remarques historiques, strategiques et critiques (Paris-Lille, 1835).
 ~ DOCUMENTS
I
Documents
I
.,J
I THE MARCHIENNES ACCOUNT
In the year of our Lord 1214, on the sixth calend ~f A~gust, something
worthy of remembrance occurred at :he bri~~e of Bouvines, ,m the confines of
the Tournaisis. In this place, on one side, Philip, the no?le King of the Fran,ks,
had gathered a part of his king~om., On the other side Otto ~ho, having
persisted in the obstinacy of his wickedness, had been deprived of ,the
imperial dignity through the decree of the Holy Church, and his accomplices
in wickedness, Ferrand, Count of Flanders, and Renaud, Count of Boul.ogne,
many other barons, and also those receiving a stipend from John, the Km~ of
England, had assembled in order, as the events we:e to ~how, to fight agal~st
the French. Driven by insatiable hatred, the Flernings, m order to recognize
each other more easily, had, while preparing themselves to a:tack the French,
sewn a small sign of the cross on the back and front of their coats of arms.
But it was much less for the glory and honor of Christ's cros~ th~n for the
growth of their wickedness, the misfortune and harm of their friends, the
misery and damage of their bodies. This was clearly shown by the outcome of
the battle. Indeed, they did not remind themselves of the sacred precept o.fthe
Church which states: "The one who communicates with an excommunicate
is excommunicated." Persisting in their alliance w!th Otto who, by the
judgment and authority of the Pope, had been bound mto anathema and had
been separated from the faithful of the Ho~y Mother Church, they were
mocking this sentence with impudence and dishonesty. Inflamed by cr,uelt~,
they were planning while boasting with each other to reduce to nothu~g~ If
they could, the scepter and the crown of royal dignity. However, divine
mercy and compassion which every.~here saves a?d p.rotects ItS own,
disposed of the matter differently. Philip, the. very wise ~mg of t?e G~uls,
troubled by the imminent danger he saw ?IS army fa~mg, decided m a
prudent and discreet council to withdraw himself and his people from the
Translator's note: Translated into English from the French translation of the Latin.
193
enemy's aggression if he could. He gradually retreated. However, seeing that
his adversaries were pursuing him terribly, like enraged dogs, and also
bearing in mind that he could not retreat without too much dishonor, he put
his hope in the Lord; he arranged his army into military echelons as is
customary for those who are about to fight. But first, with a contrite heart, he
addressed a prayer to the Lord. Then having called upon the noblemen of his
army, he started to exhort them humbly, modestly, and with tears in his eyes:
they should resist the adversaries with virility as their ancestors had been
accustomed to doing, and so as not to suffer a loss that neither they nor their
heirs could repair. These things, said with so much humility and earnestness,
strongly warmed the hearts of his audience to act well and fight with virility.
As soon as the order of the royal power was heard in the army, the knights
and the auxiliaries, armed and arranged into ordered echelons, prepared in
all haste for the battle. The horses' bridles were tightened by the auxiliaries.
The armor shone in the splendor of the sun and it seemed that the light of day
was doubled. The banners unfolded in the winds and offered themselves to
the currents; they presented a delightful spectacle to the eyes. What then?
The armies, thus ordered for battle on each side, entered into combat, full of
ardor and desire to fight. But very quickly the dust rose toward the sky in
such quantities that it became hard to see and to recognize each other. The
first French echelon attacked the Flemings with virility, breaking their
echelons by nobly cutting across them, and penetrated their army through an
impetuous and tenacious movement. The Flernings, seeing this and defeated
in the space of an hour, turned their backs and quickly took to flight. At-this
perilous moment, dependants abandoned to distress rhein lords, their fathers,
their sonsrand their nephews. However, Ferrand, Count-of Flanders, and
Renaud, Count of Boulogne, remained in the battle and resisted the
onslaught of the French with virile fighting. In the end, they were wounded
and taken by the French along with innumerable nobles whose names we will
not give; they were jailed in a number of castles in Gau!. As for Otto who, by
the authority of the Pope, we refrain from calling Emperor, deprived of
everyone's help, thrown three times to the ground from his horse, or rather
his horses as some claim, almost alone except for a single count, he hurried to
take flight. Thus, surreptitiously fleeing from the King of France's hand, he
escaped, vanquished in battle. In this manner, the providence of divine mercy
ended this battle which had been fought, as we have said, near the bridge of
Bouvines, for the praise and the glory of His Majesty, and for the honor of
the Holy Church-May its honor, its virtue, and its power remain through the
infinity of centuries to come. Amen.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XXVI, pp. 390-1
 194 DOCUMENTS
11 THE ANONYMOUS OF BETHUNE
These are the names of the high men who went to battle with the King of
France: Eudes, Duke of Burgundy; Henry, Count of Bar; Henry, Count of
I Grantpre; John, Count of Beaumont; Gauthier of Chatillon, Count of Saint-
Pol; William, Count of Ponthieu; Arnoul, Count of Guines; Raoul, Count of
Soissons; Mathew of Montmorency; William des Barres; Engourans of
Couchy and his two brothers Thomas and Robert, and many other great men
too numerous to name.
The King of France went to his town Tournai, while the Emperor along
with a castellan, Everard Radol, Castellan of Tournai which he held from
Count Ferrand, went to Mortagne. When the King of France heard that they
were so near him, he became worried as Mortagne is only three miles from
Tournai. Then he called his great men and concluded in council that they
would go towards France the next day.
When the next day came, the king had all his men arm themselves and his
echelons put in formation. He thus left Tournai and took the road to Lille
with his host in good order. They were going so fast that all those who saw
them said that they had never seen such a great armed host riding at such a
speed. And when the Emperor and the Count Ferrand and the people who
were at Mortagne found this out, what did they do? They climbed in full
armor on their horses and rode at breakneck speed after them so as to catch
up with their prey. They reached the Duke of Burgundy and the Champenois
who made up the rearguard in a small wood two miles away from Tournai
and pressed them so hard that they had to stop and turn toward them and
had their bowmen shoot so as to make their men [the assailants] retreat. In
this manner, the Flemings forced the rearguard to stop five times on this day
and turn towards them, so that the Duke of Burgundy sent a message asking
the King to ride slowly as they were much pressed.
Brother Cuerin came to the King at a church called Bouvines, near
Cysoign, which the Queen had once visited. He found him off his horse at a
place where he had refreshed himself with bread and wine. He asked him:
"What are you doing?" "Well," said the King, "I have eaten." "That is
good," said Brother Guerin, "and now you need to arm yourself because
those on the opposite side do not, on any account, want to postpone the
battle till tomorrow but they want it now. Thus you must do likewise."
It was Sunday, and because of this the King would have preferred the
battle to be postponed till the morrow for the honor of the day. But when he
saw that there was no other way, he put on his armor, entered the church,
made his orisons, and was soon finished praying. Then he climbed on his
horse and did not appear frightened anymore as he decided and ordered his
affairs very wisely and assuredly and without any panic, and had everyone,
knights and others, called to return to their battalions. I must tell you that
most of the host had already passed a bridge spanning a small river and
Translator's note: Translated into English directly from the Old French.
DOCUMENTS 195
several pavilions had already been set up on the other side of the bridge in a
meadow where the King had planned to spend the night.
Thus the King had his echelons put in formation and they rode forward.
You could see among them many noblemen, much rich armor and many
noble banners. The same was true for the opposite side, but I must tell you
that they did not ride as well and in as orderly a manner as the French, and
they became aware of it.
As the hosts had come close enough to see each other clearly, they stopped
for a long time and put their affairs in order. Then the king asked for an
echelon of mounted sergeants, who were all carrying pennants at the tips of
their swords, to assemble, and they did. They attacked the Flemings and
performed many great deeds.
Before anything else notable occurred, Arnoul, the Castellan of Rasse, let
his horse loose between the two lines and charged their bowmen, sending
them running and throwing one to the ground; then he charged the knights
and in his drive threw rudely to the ground a bachelor named Michel of
Auchi and kept on going through, and then came back safe and sound to his
people where he was much praised.
Then the Count of Flanders charged the Champenois and the Champenois
charged him and there was a heated melee, but the Champenois had to
retreat.
Then, the Viscount of Melun charged; in his battalion were the Count of
Ponthieu, the Count of Guines, and all those residing between the Somme
and the Lis who had come from the fief of Louis, the King's son. This
battalion stopped the pursuit, and they all fought so well that the valorous
men who were there said that they had never seen such good tourneying as
had occurred during this battle.
Baudouin of Praet, a wealthy man from Flanders, with a blow threw Huan
of Malaunoi [Hugh of Maleveine?], a very good knight, and his horse to the
ground as he was charging him.
Then the armies from both sides charged each other and there was a melee.
The King's trumpets sounded because he himself had been hit and his horse
fell under him, but he was soon up again. On this day, his banner was carried
by Galon of Montigny, a knight from the Vermandois who carried it very
gallantly.
Gauthier of Chatillon, Count of Saint-Pol, charged through the whole of
the battalions and caused much damage. And when Henry, Duke of Louvain,
who had not yet: charged, saw this, he took flight and initiated the defeat.
When Count Ferrand was taken, the Flemings started to tremble and, one
after another, began to take flight. Seeing this, the valorous men of France
charged this battalion and gave grief to the Flemings and the Emperor's men
even though these included many a noble baron.
Mathew of Montmorency held a billhook in his hands and was astride a
great horse. All those who saw him charge through the melee and saw how
he went about, hitting and throwing knights to the ground and wounding
many people, deny ever having seen a better knight.
Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, had put on the coat of arms of William des
196 DOCUMENTS
Barres, the good knight, but carried his own shield. You must know that he
[William] had performed so many great deeds of arms that he was spoken
about with praise as far away as Syria. He [the Duke of Burgundy] looked to
one side and saw Arnoul of Audenarde, one of the greatest men of Flanders
and, since his youth, one of the best knights, at a spot where he had stopped
in front of the sergeants. And thus he charged him. When Arnoul saw him
coming, he told his people: "Lords, look, William des Barres, the good
knight, is charging us. Let us make our horses face toward him because if he
attacks us from the side he would do us too much harm." He was saying this
because he thought that the duke was William des Barres on account of the
coat of arms that he was wearing. As he uttered these words, the duke came
upon him and Arnoul stood his ground well and bravely. As they fought each
other, the duke bent down and tried to slay his horse but Arnoul had a knife
in his hand and tried to hit the duke through the eye-hole of his helmet but
the duke bent down and parried the blow, and then fled. Andwhen Arnoul
saw him leave, he told his squire who was called Estoutin: "God helped us!"
Estoutin said: "He could help us some more and make their good knights
leave instead of ours abandoning this place." But things were not to go the
way he wished. And thus there were clashes everywhere and they did what
they knew how to do well. There was fine prowess and passage of arms.
What more can I tell you? The Emperor's men and those of Count Ferrand
were completely defeated. Count Ferrand himself was taken, as I told you,
with many great men from his land. Hellins of Waverin, the Seneschal of
Flanders, a fairly new knight, was taken. The three sons of Rasson of Gaure,
the boteillier: of Flanders - Rasse the eldest who was very brave for his age
and his two brothers, Arnoul and Philip - were taken. Gerard of
Grinberghes, who was also a very brave man, was taken. Gauthier of
Ghistele and Philip of Malenghin, who had much valor, and Peter del
Maisnil, a young man, the son of the good Pieron del Maisnil who was both
valorous and wise, were taken. Robert of Bethune was taken but he offered
so much to a knight called Fleming of Crepelaine that he freed him and
brought him back to safety.
From amongst the King of England's people William Longsword, Count of
Salisbury, brother of the King of England, was taken.
Renaud of Dammartin, the Count of Boulogne, and several other knights
with these two counts were taken.
From among the Emperor's people Count Hairy and Bernard of Ostemale,
a very good knight, and Conrad of Tremoigne, a man of great worth, and
several others were taken.
Arnoul of Audenarde, who was Flemish, was also taken but the King soon
turned him over to the Count of Soissons whose cousin he was and to Roger
of Rassoi whose daughter he had wed. In the evening, the Duke of Burgundy
mentioned this and said to the King: "You have the right to ransom him
because if it were not for him you would have 200 more knights in your
2 Translator's note: Probably refers to an official charged with collecting a tax on
wine.
DOCUMENTS 197
prisons." And the King answered the duke: "Duke of Burgundy, I am well
aware of this! But he never did like war and he always advised his lord
against it; he has never wanted to do homage to the King of England when
the others did so; if he has done me wrong in order to loyally serve his lord, I
hold no ill will toward him on that account." Thus the King did honor to
Arnoul of Audenarde.
What more can I tell you? It was a marvel that the number of barons,
bachelors, sergeants taken was so great. They were pursued over two miles of
land. The emperor took flight towards Valenciennes, and spent the night at
the Abbey of Saint-Sage, and the others ran away to various places as best as
thoroughly vanquished people could.
And the King returned to France with the whole of his host and his
prisoners, He put the Gount of Boulogne in the tower at Peronne, and the
others he brought to Paris. He put the Count Ferrand along with Eustache
del Roes, a great man from Hainaut, in prison in the tower of the Louvre
where many a great man and traitor was kept. And most of the others he put
in prison in the fort of the Great Bridge and the others he put in the fort of the
Little Bridge. In this way, he kept them a long time and received large
ransoms for several of them and, as you might guess, none escaped.
After this, no one dare wage war against him, and he lived in great peace
and the whole of the land was in great peace for a long time to come so that
his bailiffs could exact much and his son's bailiffs even more from all the land
he had come to hold: it was one of his sergeants called Nevelon, who was
bailiff of Arras, who put into such servitude the whole of Flanders, inherited
by Louis, that all those who heard about it marveled that one could suffer so
and endure.
This Battle of Bouvines occurred on a Sunday, in the month of July, in the
year of our Lord One Thousand Two Hundred and Fourteen.
Receuil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, XXIV, pp. 768-70
III FRAGMENTS OF THE PHILIPPIAD
... He says [these things] and runs to the King. He [the King] can scarcely
believe that someone would dare initiate a battle on this holy day which God
himself has specially consecrated to himself alone. The King nonetheless
suspends the march, gives orders for the banners preceding him to stop, and
addresses his friends as follows: "Now, the Lord Himself is giving me what I
wanted; now, beyond our merits and our hopes, divine favor is granting us
more than all our wishes. Those we were previously trying to reach through
long detours and the many turns of the roads, the Lord's mercy has brought
to us, so that He Himself could, through us, destroy His enemy in one blow.
W:ith our swords He will cut off the members of His enemies; He will turn us
into cutting instruments; He will hit and we will be the hammer; He will lead
Translator's note: Translated into English from the French translation of the Latin.
i
! 198 DOCUMENTS
the whole battle and we will be His ministers. I have no doubt that victory
will be His, that He will triumph through us, that we will triumph through
Him over His own enemies who bear Him so much hatred. Already, they
have deserved being struck with the sword of the father of fathers [because]
they have dared to despoil Him, to deprive the Church of its property, to take
away the small coins [les sous] with which the clergy, the monks, a~d God:s
poor were sustaining themselves and whose curses are now c~~smg their
damnation, and will keep on doing so, and whose laments nsmg to the
heavens will force them [the enemy] to succumb to our blows. In contrast,
the Church is in communion with us and assists us with its prayers and
everywhere recommends us to the Lord. Everywhere, the clergy p~ay~ for us
with an ardor that is even greater than our love for them. This IS why,
strengthened with the unbreakable power of hope, I am asking you to sh?w
yourselves to be the enemies of the enemies.of the Church. May your fightl?g
prevail, not for me but for you and the kingdom; may each of you~ while
protecting the kingdom and the crown, take care also not ,to lose his ow.n
honor. However, my wish for battle is less than my reluctance to sully this
holy day with the spilling of blood." . sovereign of the whole world. On a chariot, he has a pole raised around
He said this and the French, through a long JOYous cry, make known that
they are ready to fight for the honor of the kingdom a?d the Kin? However,
they are all of the opinion that they should go to Bouvines to see If the ~nemy
will not choose to respect the holy day and to postpone the d~el tll~ ~he
passing of the day would make the battle lawful. Moreover, this position
would be a better one for the defense of the baggage and all the other things
carried in order to set up camp, in view of the fact that it is only open to one
side and that the marsh, lying without break to the right and the l~ft,
intercepts the road and makes crossing impossible exce~t through the fairly
narrow bridge of Bouvines on which quadrup~ds and. bipeds can g.o towar~
the south. On the far side lie fields and a beautiful plain, abloom With Ceres
grains, and which, continuing over a large.area, reaches .Sang~in on the ~est
and Cysoing on the east - a place well SUIted to be sullied With blood since
these names recall blood and killing.
Right away the King has the bridge enlarged so that twelve men could
cross abreast of each other and so that the wagons with their four horses
could cross it with their drivers. Near a church consecrated to Peter, the
King, hot from the sun, hoping that the battle would be postponed till.the
morrow, was resting in the shade of an ~sh-tree, not far from .the bndge
which had already been crossed by the main part of the army, while-the su.n,
'Y
having reached its highest point, was heralding t~e middle of the ~a'y- hlle
the King was getting ready for a short rest, a SWift messenger, arrlVl?g In all
haste, exclaimed: "The enemy has already charged the rearguard; neither the
troops from Champagne, nor those which you have sent earlier are able to
repulse them: while they are resisting and do their best to slow them down,
[the enemy1pushes forward and has already traveled two miles."
Moved by these words, the king immediately stands up, enters the church,
and places his arms under the protection of the Lord. After a short prayer, he
comes out: "Let us go," he exclaims. "Let us go in all haste to help our
DOCUMENTS 199
companions. God will not be angry if we take up our arms at a holy time
against those who are attacking us. He has not found the Maccabees guilty of
any crime for having defended themselves during a holy Sabbath when they
repulsed the forces of their enemies with a holy victory. Even more so, it is
seemly for us to fight on this day when the whole of the Church begs the Lord
on our behalf and we are proving ourselves to be its friends." Speaking these
words, he puts. his armor on, throws his tall body on his tall horse, and,
retracing his footsteps, hurries toward the enemy while the terrifying din of
the trumpet,s is heard all around him....
Song X, verses 755-838
Soon after, Otto, 'already flying his banners as if he wanted to celebrate
before the fact the triumph he was so sure of, raises his standard high,
surrounds himself with the supreme honors of the empire, so as to make his
rays shine in the middle of such a great show and to proclaim himself the
which a dragon is curled which can be seen far away from all sides, its tail
and wings bloated by the winds, showing its terrifying teeth' and opening its
enormous mouth. Above the dragon hovers Jupiter's bird with golden wings
while the whole of the surface of the chariot, resplendent with gold, rivals the
sun and even boasts of shining with a brighter light.
As to the King, he is content to see lightly fly his simple banner, made of a
simple silken cloth of bright red and in every way similar to the banners
usually used in church processions on prescribed days. This banner is
commonly known as the Oriflamme: it has the right to be carried in all
battles, ahead of every other banner, and the Abbot of Saint-Denis has the
custom of handing it over to the king whenever he takes up his arms and goes
to battle. The royal banner was carried ahead of the King by Galon of
Montigny, a man of strong body. Thus the two armies found themselves face
to face; the portion of plain separating them was narrow; they were lined up
face to face, but one could not yet hear the sound of any voice.
Placed on the other side and opposite the magnanimous Philip, Otto was
covered with gold and clothed with the imperial ornaments....
Song XI, verses 20-46
... On the right side and at a great distance from the King, the Champagne
corps threatens the men of Flanders. With them [the Champenois] are the
Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Sainr-Pol, John of Beaumont, and the men
sent by the Abbot of Saint-Medard, retainers famous on account of their
great prowess, and who numbered 300. Each of them, mounted on a horse,
exulted in his armor and brandished his sword and lance; they were from the
valley of Soissons which produces strong bodies. Between them and the King
was placed a continuous line of men, splendid in valor, and each of their
200 DOCUMENTS
leaders called their echelons close to them while the trumpets sounded
terrifyingly, inviting the warriors to promptly charge the enemy....
Song XI, verses 53-64
. . . While Ferrand in fighting arouses courage in his men, lances are
shattering, swords and daggers hit each other, combatants split each other's
heads with their two-sided axes, and their lowered swords plunge in the
bowels of the horses when the iron protection which covers the bodies of
their masters prevents iron from penetrating them. Those who are carried
then fall with those carrying them and become easier to vanquish when they
are thus thrown to the dust. But even then, iron cannot reach them unless
their bodies are first dispossessed of the armor protecting them, so much has
each knight covered his members with several layers of iron and enclosed his
chest with armor, pieces of leather and other types of breastplate. Thus,
nowadays, modern men take much greater care to protect themselves than
did the ancients who would often, as yve learn from our reading, fall by the
thousand thousand in a single day. While misfortunes multiply, precautions
against these misfortunes multiply as well, and new defenses are invented
against new kinds of attack....
Song XI, verses 116-32
...The irruption of the combatants is so lively all over the field and those
who are hitting or are hit are so close to each other that they can barely find
the place or the opportunity to stretch their arms so as to strike more
strongly. The silk coverings attached to the top of the armor so that everyone
could be recognized by these signs have been so cut up and ripped into a
thousand shreds by the maces, swords, and lances which are pounding on the
armor so as to break it that each combatant can barely distinguish his friends
from his enemies. One is lying on the ground, overturned on his back with his
legs in the air, another falls on his side, a third is thrown head first and his
eyes and mouth fill with sand. Here a cavalryman, there a foot soldier
voluntarily surrender, fearing more to be killed than to live vanquished. You
could see horses here and there lying in the meadow and letting out their last
breath; others, wounded in the stomach, were vomiting their entrails while
others were lying down with their hocks severed; still others wandered here
and there without their masters and freely offered themselves to whomever
wanted to be transported by them: there was scarce a spot where one did not
find corpses or dying horses stretched out ....
Song XI, verses 178-99
... Indeed, the Bishop of Beauvais, having seen the brother of the King of the
English, a man of incredible strength whom the English had on this account
DOCUMENTS 201
nicknamed "Longsword," overthrow the men of Dreux and do great harm to
his brother's battalion, the bishop became unhappy, and since by chance he
hap~ened to have a mace in his hand, hiding his identity of bishop, he hits the
Englishman on the top of the head, shatters his helmet, and throws him to the
ground forcing him to leave on it the imprint of his whole body. And, since
the author of such a noble deed could not remain unnoticed and since a
bishop should not be known to have carried arms, he tries to hide as much as
possible and gives orders to John, whom Nesle obeys by the right of his
ancestors, to put the warrior in chains and to receive the prize for the deed.
Then the bi~h~p, throwing down several more men with his mace, again
renounces his titles of ho~or and his victories in favor of other knights so as
not to be accused of havmg done work unlawful for a priest, as a priest is
never allowed to be present at such encounters since he must not desecrate
either his hands or his eyes with blood. It is not forbidden, however, to
defend oneself and one's people provided that this defense does not exceed
legitimate limits....
Song XI, verses 538-58
. .. While flight had entirely emptied the field of battle on both wings, the
C~unt of Bo.ulogne still r~mained .in the center, frequently retreating into the
midst of his foot soldiers, furiously and ceaselessly striking with his
mu~derous s~ord the breasts of his friends and kin. Enemy of his friends and
hatmg the children of his fatherland, neither the tie to his native land nor the
love owed to those sharing the same blood, nor the ties of a friendly flesh, nor
the pledges sworn so often to his King and lord, had softened his heart
harde~ed b.y [s~i11~d] blood. His unbridled valor did not allow anyone to
vanquish him; It ~Id not matter whom his arm reached, he could [always]
walk away the wmner, so well could he handle weapons with ability and
prude~ce, so much the prowess. which was natural to him in battle loudly
procl~lmed that he was the true Issue of French parents. And even though his
f~ult Itself has, oh France, made him fall in your eyes, do not be ashamed of
him and do not let your brow blush. Not only are children not cause for
shame to those who give .rhem birth but, moreover, it often happens that a
good mother puts depraved children into this world and also often a wicked
mother nurses healthy children at her breast. '
The count kept on 'retreating with impunity behind the Wall of his foot
soldiers; he did n?t, need to fear .being hit with a mortal blow by the enemy.
Indeed, as our knights were fightmg on their owrl with their swords and their
s~ort weapons, they ,"-,ould h.ave feared attacking the foot soldiers equipped
With lances: these, With their lances longer than knives and swords and
moreover lined up in an unbreachable formation of triple layers of walls
were s? cleverlr disposed that there was no way that they could be breached:
The Kmg, havmg recognized this, 'sent against them 3,000 armed retainers
mounted on horses and equipped with lances so as to make them abandon
their position by putting them in disorder, and thus to free himself of this

202 DOCUMENTS
formidable ring. A clamor then arises; the cries of the dying, the noise of
arms make it no longer possible to hear the sounds of the trumpets. They fall,
riddled with wounds, all of these unfortunate people with whom the Count
of Boulogne had surrounded himself with an art now useless, believing in
vain that he could defy all the French by himself, daring to keep on fighting
them after all the others had run away and disdaining owing his life to a
shameful flight.
These unfortunates could no longer be protected by their long weapons, or
their two-sided axes, or by the count who was no longer able to defend his
wall. Nothing could then prevent valor from reaching its goal; alone, valor
finally overcomes all obstacles; no resistance, no artifice, no force can resist
it; alone it provides everything and rises above everyone. It rejoices in being
the intimate companion of the French, it finally grants them the full
enjoyment of their triumph. They massacre all their enemies, send them all to
Tartarus and completely take away from the Count of Boulogne the
sanctuary he had made for himself. As for him, however, having seen the field
flooded on all sides with fugitives so that there barely remained around him
thirty men, knights and foot soldiers, the remnants of the whole of his troop,
and so that no one could believe that he was willing to let himself be taken or
vanquished without resistance, he throws himself in the midst of the French,
followed by only five of his companions, while the French surround all
the others and barely find enough room within their tight ranks to bind
them. Then the count, as if he had to triumph alone over all his enemies and
as if he had not yet engaged in any combat on this day, furious and using of
the whole of his strength and multiplying his efforts, rages in the middle of
the French and hurries through them towards the King, having no doubt that
he will take his life as prize for his own death, and wishing only to die at the
same time as him.
A certain Peter, whom La Tournelle had given both his name and. his
distinguished birth, was on foot having lost his horse while the count was
audaciously throwing himself into the ranks of his enemies. This man,
deserving by his origin and his exploits to become a knight, was both beloved
and well known at the King's court. Seeing that the Count of Boulogne had
taken up the fight again without wanting to surrender and was even resisting
all those around him with renewed valor, Peter quickly went toward him,
lifted up with his left hand the wire mesh which, tied with large strips,
covered the belly of the horse, and with his right hand, thrusting his sword
into the body-oethe horse at the groin, cut his noble parts. Then he pulled out
his sword and the blood flowed abundantly from a large wound and covered
the green grass. At this sight, one of the loyal friends of the count ran up to
him and, quickly grasping the reins of his horse, heatedly addressed words
and friendly exhortations to the count himself who, disregarding God's will
and while all the others had taken flight, still remained there, attempting to
vanquish all by himself those who were the victors, thus provoking his own
destruction through such behavior and not fearing to throw himself into
well-deserved ruin when it would be easy to escape it by fleeing with the
others. While he was addressing the count with these words, he drags him in
'I
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DOCUMENTS 203
spite of himself by pulling his horse by the bridle, so as to make him climb on I
another horse and be able to flee. But the count resists with all his might, his
proud heart not being capable of ever renouncing the battle: "I would
rather," he says, "be vanquished while fighting and saving my honor than
live by running away. Life is not worth [the loss of] honor. 1 am going back
to the battle, regardless of the fate which threatens me."
He says this but already his horse has felt his nerves slacken and can no
longer stand. Then John of Condune and his brother Quenon run up to him
and hit the count with many blows on each side of his head and throw down
both horse and knight; they both fall head first, and then the count lies on his
back, his thigh trapped and crushed under the full weight of the horse. While
the two brothers busy themselves in binding the cavalier, John, nicknamed
"de Rouvrai" (de Robore) ["strong"], a name which facts justify, appears
and finally forces the count to surrender in spite of himself. And as he was
slow in getting up from the ground, waiting in vain for help and still hoping
to escape, a boy [a commoner] named Cornut, one of the servants of the Elect
of Senlis, and walking ahead of the latter, a man strong in body; arrives
holding a deadly knife in his right hand. He wanted to cut the count's noble
parts by plunging the knife in at the place where the body armor is joined to
the leggings, but the armor-sowed into the leggings will not separate and
open up to the knife, and thus Cornut's hopes are thwarted. However, he
CIrcles the count and looks for other ways to reach his goal. Pushing the two
whalebones out, of the way and soon pulling off the whole of his helmet, he
inflicts a large wound upon his unprotected face. He was already' getting
ready to slit his throat; no one was holding him back and if it had been
possible he would have killed him. The count, however, still.resists him with
on~ ~and, and does his best to repulse death as long as he can. But, finally
arnving at a full gallop, the Elect of Senlis pushes the threatening knife away
from the count's throat and himself pushes away the arm of his servant.
Having recognized him, the count cries: "Oh, kind Elect, do not let me be
assassinated. Do not suffer me to be condemned to such an unjust death, so
that this boy could rejoice to be the author of my destruction. The King's
court would condemn me much better; let it inflict on me the punishment 1
have incurred." He says this and the Elect of Senlis answers him in these
words: "You will not die, but why are you so slow to get up? Stand up, you
must be presented to the King right away."
While saying this, he forces the wounded man to stand up in spite of
himself. His face and all his members are covered with a stream of blood; he
can barely lift his body to climb back on a horse; the Elect of Senlis places
him on it and everyone applauds, as he still scarce appears to be vanquished.
The Elect finally entrusts him to the care of John of Nesle to go and offer this
pleasing gift to the King....
Song xt, verses 585-718
 204 DOCUMENTS
... Here, one man grabs a war-horse; over there, a big cob offers its head to a
stranger and is tied with a rope. Others take abandoned weapons from the
fields; one grabs a shield, another a sword or a helmet. Another one leaves
happy with leggings while yet another is pleased with a breastplate and a
third gathers clothing and armor. Yet even happier and in a better position to
withstand the vagaries of fortune is the one who can seize the horses laden
with baggage or the swords hidden under their bulging sheets, or again those
wagons the Belgians are said to have been the first to build in the olden days
when they possessed the Empire: these wagons are filled with golden
vessels, with all kinds of implements which are not to be disdained, and
with silken clothing worked with great art which the merchant transports to
our country from far away places seeking in his greed to multiply his petty
profits on any object. Each of these wagons, supported by four wheels, is
topped by a chamber which in no way differs from the superb nuptial
chamber where a newly wed bride is preparing for a new union, 'so many are
the possessions, food, and precious ornaments enclosed in the large belly of
each of these chambers woven out of bright willow. Sixteen horses hitched to
each of these wagons is barely sufficient to drag away the spoils with which
they are laden.
As to the wagon on which the reprobate Otto had raised his dragon and
over which he had hung his golden winged eagle, it soon falls under countless
axe blows and is broken into a thousand pieces. It becomes the prey of flames
as it is wished that no trace should remain of so much pomp and that pride
thus condemned should disappear with all its marks of ostentation.The eagle
whose wings were broken was promptly repaired. The king sent it
immediately to King Frederick so that he would learn through this present
that, since Otto had been repulsed, the fasces of the Empire had passed into
his hands by divine favor. ...
Song XII, verses 18-50
... At that time, only the city of Rome was offering applause to its kings and
d the other cities were not in the least concerned with rejoicing over the
I
triumphs of the Romans or of going to any expense to add to the ceremonies.
I But now, in all places located in the land of the vast kingdom which contains
iI so many villages, so many castles, so many cities, so many counties, so many
duchies worthy of the scepter, in all the provinces submitted to so many
bishops, each administering justice in his own diocese and publishing his
edicts in innumerable towns, every town, every village, every castle, all the
countryside feel with the same ardor the glory of a victory common to all,
and take for themselves that which belongs to all in common, so that this
universal applause spreads to all places and a single victory causes the birth
of a thousand triumphs: Applause is heard everywhere throughout the
kingdom: people from all social conditions, from all fortunes, from all
professions, from all sexes, from all ages sing the same hymns of joy, all
voices celebrate at once the glory, the praise, and the honor of the King. And
DOCUMENTS 205
the raptures of t?e soul are not only expressed through songs or in gesture: in
the c.as~les .and m the towns, the trumpets sound in every street so that the
mUltIp~lCatl?n of these choruses would proclaim public feelings louder. Do
not thmk either that any expense is spared: knight bourgeois villein all
sh·me. un der the purple, they all wear clothing made 'only of samite,
" or very
~ne hn~n, or pu~ple cloth. The peasant, resplendent in imperial adornments,
IS surprised at hH~self and dares compare himself to the mightiest kings. The
clothes change hIS heart so much that he believes that the man himself is
c~ange~ ~long with the unfamiliar clothing. And each is not simply content
":Ith shmmg as much as his companions, but he also attempts to distinguish
himself from t~e mass of others by some ornament. Thus they all vie with
each o.ther, trymg to s~rpass each other with the honor of their clothing.
D~nng the whole night, candles ceaselessly shine in everyone's hands,
chasing away the darkness so that the night, finding itself suddenly
transformed mto day and resplendent with so much brilliance and light, says
to th~ stars and the moon: "1 owe nothing to you."
. ThIS ha.ppened be~ause love for the King was so great that it led the people
In every village to give vent to the rapture of their happiness....
Song XII, verses 225-64
Oeuvres de Rigord et de Cuillaume le Breton, Vol. H,
Paris, 1885 (Societe de I'Histoire de France)
IV ROGER OF WENDOVER
At this same time, the King of England's army which was waging war in
Flanders was causin~ devastation with so much success that, after having
ravaged several provmces, it penetrated into the rerritory of Ponthieu and
devas~a~ed it with. an unrelenting fury. Those who took part in this
expedition were valiant men, with great expertise in war, such as William,
Count of HoIIand,Renaud, formerly. Count of Boulogne, Ferrand, Count of
Fl~nders, Hugh of Bo~es, a good knight but cruel and arrogant who struck
WIth so much rage agamst this country that he spared neither the weakness of
women nor the innocence of small .children, King John had named as
m~rshal of this army, William, Count of Salisbury, to fight with the En~lish
kmghts and to disburse to the others payment taken from the treasury. These
w~rriors received the help and the favor of Otto, Emperor of the Romans,
WIth the troops that the Duke of Louvain and the Duke of Brabant had
assembled. They were together attacking the French with equal fury. Wben
news of this reached Philip, King of France, he was very pained as he worried
that he did not have enough troops to defend this part of the land, having
~ecent~y sent to Poitou his son Louis with a large army to repel the hostile
mcursions of the King of England. However, even though he often repeated
Translator's note: Translated into English from the French translation of the Latin.
 206 DOCUMENTS
to himself the common saying "The one who is busy with many things at
once can less clearly judge each one of them," he nonetheless gathered a large
army made up of counts, barons, knights, and sergeants, on foot and on
horses, and [militias] coming from the communes and, the towns.
Accompanied by these contingents, he prepared to march against his
adversaries. At the same time, he ordered the bishops, the clerks, the monks,
and the nuns to distribute alms, to address prayers to God, and to celebrate
the divine mysteries in favor of the kingdom. Having arranged this, he left
with his army to fight his enemies.
: , He was told that his adversaries had advanced in arms up to the bridge of
Bouvines, in the territory of Ponthieu. He led his armies and his standards in
that direction. When he arrived at the above named bridge, he crossed the
river with the whole of his army and decided to camp in that place. Indeed,
the heat was extreme because the sun is very hot in the month of July. Thus
the French took up their position near the river to refresh their men and their
horses. They arrived at that river on a Saturday, toward evening, and after
having disposed, on the right and on the left, wagons drawn by two and four
horses as well as the other vehicles which had carried the food, the arms, the
machines and all the instruments of war, this army set up guards on all sides
and spent the night in this spot.
The next morning, when the princes of the King of England's chivalry were
told of the arrival of the King of France, they hurriedly held a council and
unanimously decided for a battle champel. But since this day was a Sunday,
the wisest in the army, and particularly Renaud, formerly Count of
Boulogne, stated that it would not be very honorable to wage a battle on such
a solemn day and to sully this day with homicide and the spilling of human
blood. The Emperor Otto went along with this viewpoint and said that if he
fought on such a day he could never boast of a joyous triumph. At these
words, Hugh of Boves lost his temper and, cursing, called the Count Renaud
a despicable traitor, and reproached him for the lands and the large
possessions that he had received from the King of England's generosity. He
added that the postponement of the battle to another day would bring
irreparable damage which would harm King John and that one always has
cause to repent when one has not grasped a favorable opportunity. Renaud
answered Hugh with indignation: "This day will prove that it is I who is
loyal and you who are a traitor; because on this Sunday I will, if need be,
fight to the death for the King while you, as usual, on this same day, you will
show to all by running away that you are the evil traitor." These insulting
words provoked by Hugh of Boves' similar words, soured everyone's spirits
and made the battle unavoidable. The army ran to its arms and formed into
ranked battalions. When they were all armed, the allies divided themselves
into three battalions: the first had as captains Ferrand, the Count of Flanders,
Renaud, Count of Boulogne, and William, Count of Salisbury; the second
was led by William, Count of Holland, and by Hugh of Boves with his
Brabancons; the third was made up of German soldiers under the command
of the Roman Emperor Otto. In this order, they marched slowly toward the
enemy and arrived at the French.
1 DOCUMENTS 207
King Philip, seeing his adversaries ready for a battle champ el, had the
bridge which was behind his army destroyed so that if, by chance, some of his
J soldiers should attempt to flee they could only open up a way through the
enemies themselves. The King, after having arranged his troops in the area
delimited by the wagons and the baggage, awaited the shock of his
adversaries' attack. Finally, the trumpets sounded on both sides and the first
battalion, in which the counts we have spoken of were, threw itself so
violently on the French that in a moment it broke their ranks and penetrated
to where the King of France stood. Count Renaud, who had been
disinherited and chased away from his county by the King, saw him, struck
him with his lance, threw him to the ground, and tried to kill him with his
sword. But a knight who, along with many others, had been assigned to
protect him [the King], threw himself between him and the count and
received the mortal blow. The French, seeing their King on the ground,
hurried towards him, and a large troop of knights put him back on his horse
with some difficulty. Then the battle was engaged on all sides; swords threw
lightning flashes by falling like thunder on the helmeted heads and the melee
became furious. However, the counts we have mentioned, along with their
battalion, found themselves too far removed from their companions and
noticed they could not join their allies and the latter could not reach them.
Because of this, not being able to withstand the superior forces of the French,
they were overwhelmed by their numbers and the above named counts along
with the whole of the battalion were taken and put in chains after very great
prowess and having killed a large number of the enemies.
While these things occurred around King Philip, the Counts of Champagne,
of Perche, and of Saint-Pol, along with many nobles 'of the kingdom of
France, attacked in their turn the other two battalions and put to flight Hugh
of Boves along with all the people who had been recruited in various
provinces. While they were running away like cowards, the French, with
their swords drawn, pursued them all the way to the place where the
Emperor stood. Then the whole of the weight of combat .became
concentrated on that spot. The above named counts surrounded the Emperor
and tried to kill him or to force him to surrender. But he, with his single-
edged sword, which he held with both hands like a billhook, was dealing
unfendable blows all around him. All those he struck were stunned or fell to
the ground along with their horses. The enemies, fearing to come too close,
killed three horses under the Emperor with lance blows. But always the
praiseworthy prowess of his companions put him back on a new horse and
he threw himself anew against his enemies. Finally, the French let him go.
Unbeaten, he left the battle along with his people with no harm to him or his
followers.
The King of France, happy with such an unexpected victory, gave thanks
to God who had granted him such a great triumph over his adversaries. He
brought with him, laden with chains and destined to be locked in strong
prisons, the three aforementioned counts as well as a numerous crowd of
knights-and others. When the King arrived, the whole of Paris was
illuminated with torches and lanterns, resounding with songs, applause,
 r
I
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208 DOCUMENTS DOCUMENTS 209
fanfares, and praises during the following day and night. Carpets and silken Around him a large crowd gathered;
cloths were hung from the houses; the enthusiasm was general. His people could not attack the French
As the French had put them all in distress.
Roger of Wendover, Chranica, sive Flares Historiarum, H. O. Coxe (ed.), They had taken Ferrand and his pride;
vol. Ill, pp. 287-90, 1841 And the truth I must tell,
The Count of Boulogne, Renaud,
Threw himself upon them with full force
Just as a member of the falcon species
V PHILIPPE MOUSKET Goes to the river with the intention
Of a deadly attack on the little birds.
Loudly sounded the trumpets He proved himself a good fighter
Twice they were heard above all else To the people of John of Nesle.
So that his battalion feared no more Many of their good horses he slew,
And the trumpets were wonderful to hear. Much damage he did with his lance.
As soon as the Flemings saw the Oriflamme But it did not do him a bayberry's worth of good
As soon as they heard the trumpets sound As Rousseau, one of John of Nesle's knights
They turned around Who was very valorous and good,
As they much feared the King. ~ Attacked Count Renaud;
Yet they had come He slew his horse
And fought the Champenois And the count was thrown to the ground.
Who soon had the upper hand. But as a man who has seen much action
They all fought as champions.
Gauthier, the Castellan of Rasse,
Throws himself in before the others
1 He defends himself while down
So well that no one dares take him.
But Rousseau who was strong
Followed by Eustache of Malenghin Let himself fall on him.
On a powerful horse; They fought and struggled so much
Then came Baudouin Buridan Till the count was bound and taken away;
Along with brave and loyal knights; None of his people could escape
Then came clever Rasse of Wavre And Rousseau received great fame.
And behind him Sohiers of Wavre, Messire John of Nesle
None of them came in battle order; Who had taken the niello off many a helmet
" They all arrived haphazardly. Hit them all with great blows
They thought the king was in flight And bound their bodies with chains.
But they found him in fight. Our French with great joy
Count Ferrand on a steed Often yelled "Montjoie"
Had climbed on his horse with evil intent And several yelled "Boulogne"
And attacked the most sovereign; As the captured count was taken away;
But in spite of his pre-eminence 1
And others yelled "Hainaut"
Was captured by Hugh of Mareuil. As Ferrand and his helping friends
Were dragged to the camp.
Translator's note: Translated directly into English from the Old French. The many Much rather he would have been in Limoges.
twists and turns of the action as described in this text are motivated as much by the Upon a wagon he was disarmed
exigencies of rhyme and meter as by the desire to enthral the audience. In addition And left there with a hundred sergeants.
Mousket seemed to have loved punning. Obviously most of these features could not And the king came to the battle
be translated and as a result the English version seems to lack someof the coherence With his well-sharpened sword.
given to the original text by stylistic devices. The reader should also bear in mind that He had his trumpets sound high
the frequent use of "and" in the text often indicates simultaneous action. So as to startle the Fleming

IL ~~~ .... ~ __. _~ __ . ..... ..

210 DOCUMENTS
As their sound alone was enough
To make them lose their courage.
The Avalois yelled "Cologne,"
The duke yelled "Louvain," Conrad yelled "Tremoigne,"
And King Otto behind them
Arrived yelling "Rome."
Bernard and his companions
Rushed in yelling twice "Ostemale,"
While the duke arrived yelling "Lirnburg."
But all these cries were useless
As the people from Hainaut and Brabant
Had rushed in disunited.
Many a rallying cry could you hear
And many a fragment flew in ·the air
And many a horse was killed
On both sides of the river.
Many a shining shield and helmet
Could then be seen lying about.
So many of these the champions took
They were filled with happiness and joy.
And they yelled at the top of their lungs
When the trumpets sounded:
"Montjoie, God, and Saint Denis.
Ferrand is chained and dishonored."
The communes and the sergeants
Arrived well equipped for the fight
Killing the Flemings, killing the English,
The people from Hainaut, from Senne, and the Avalois;
And when they yelled "Montjoie"
There was not a Fleming who was not cowed.
When they decided to step in the game
Along with Emperor Otto,
Bouchards and Guy yelled "Oizi"
So loud that they were easily taken.
Furiously, their lances at the side of their saddles,
They all went at each other.
Count William Longsword
Was captured during the melee.
And the Count of Lus [Louvain?] who was behind
Was promptly pursued and divested
Of his rich arms.
There was not a Frenchman who did not
Try to overcome the false crusaders.
Many struck down their best men.
There was not a Champenois
Who did not do damage to the Flemings.
Thus they have come to the meet
1
DOCUMENTS 211
To be taught a lesson by the French,
1 From their horses they tumble down
For the King to judge them for their wrong.
The Castellan of Malenghin
Was captured, this was very good
And several of the Flemish lords
Were taken and their efforts came to naught.
Many a time you could hear
The cry "Montjoie" without break.
This word scared the Flemings,
This word was for them pain and torment,
This word stunned them all,
This word scared them so much
That the strong became weak
And the valorous cowardly.
They turned their heads away
And when the Saint Denis banner
In front of them was raised,
It seemed to them that Saint Denis
Over it had a dragon placed
To devour and slay them.
Then they could not wait to escape
J And thus they all took flight
So as not the French to fight.
But those who were not fast enough
Could not get away from the French;
Thus they were captured in twos and threes
Like little birds in a trap.
And the bald and the hairy
Were stuck without mercy....
. . . King Otto with many companions,
Having with him his people from Germany,
Came riding toward the King.
But Gerard La Truie's conroi
Saw him and it came back.
He told the King
That King Otto was riding
And coming nearer.
"Truie," said theKing, "Where is he?
Do you know?" -. "Sire, listen,
There's no doubt it's him; he's carrying
The golden shield with the black eagle
And similar banners;
He even seems very formidable
But a very worthy man
Could stop his advance."
"Go do it," said the King.
212 DOCUMENTS
Gerard La Truie then leaves
As the King gave him leave.
Into God's hands he puts himself.
His lance lowered, his shield tight
In the company of his knights
King Otto he goes to attack.
His lance flies in thirteen broken pieces,
Then he pulls out his knife
And he struck in the brain
With a straight blow in the left eye
The horse on which sat the Emperor
And grabs it by the bridle.
King Otto for his rallying cry
Yelled "Rome" three times as a call
With which prowess is called.
With a very sharp knife
With a long blade of iron
La Truie gave such a great blow
That he barely could hold on
As the horse lifted its head and trumpeted
And made Otto unsteady.
But here, arriving in the nick of time
Comes William des Barres to the rescue.
He attacks King Otto anew
And Peter Mauvoisin as well
Charges him from the other side.
King Otto responds
With more blows and sideswipes
Than they had received all year.
Bernard of Ostemale, all alone,
And Hellin of Wavre, the valorous,
Kick in the spurs
Of their good horses.
Bernard rushes in from the left
Hellin of Wavre from the right,
They make the bridle fly from [Peter's] fists
As if in quintain practice.
King Otto was thus freed
But the other two were trapped.
In partial replacement for Otto
Bernard and Hellin of Wavre were taken.
The Emperor then turned around.
Guy d'Avesne led him
Away from the fighting and got off
His horse without delay.
"Sire," he said to King Otto,
DOCUMENTS 213
"There is no doubt your horse is dying,
Its brains are on the ground,
And you will soon be captured in war
Unless you climb on mine."
"Good Sire Guy, you are right,"
Says Otto, "I thank you greatly."
Right away he got down
And climbed on Guy's horse.
He was very afraid of the King of France.
Gladly he would have gone back to the fight
If he had not been so scared of him
And if Guy d'Avesne had not stopped him.
Thus King Otto turned around
All upset and miserable
Unhappy that he could not stay.
. . . Thus the battle was over
The King had the retreat sound
And spent the night at the Bouvines bridge.
" Everyone led their prisoners there;
I
I They were guarded and the next day
They were led toward Douai
I On wagons and chariots.
Chained up like a leopard
Was Ferrand well chained
To four posts because he had been
Rebellious for too long.
He was taken to Paris for a long time,
So as to cure him
From bringing Flanders again to this point.
The Count of Boulogne Renaud
And Longsword the vassal
Were guarded and imprisoned
Summarily in several French castles
But they had struggled with their hands and feet
And pleaded not to be hanged.
And all the others as well
Were thus imprisoned.
Arnoul of Audenarde excepted,
He was set free
As he had the melee
Neither exhorted nor inflamed.
And the dead were buried
At Cysoing, and all the wounded
Carried to Douai
And several elsewhere, as we well know.
At Douai the King spent the night
214 DOCUMENTS
Along with his dejected prisoners.
The next day with all his conrois
The King rode towards Paris.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XXVI, pp. 757-62
VI THE MINSTREL OF REIMS
And then the King has all his villages and communes called up and they all
assembled on a Saturday in front of Tournai with tents and pavilions. When
Ferrand and his party found out the King was in Tournai, they were
overjoyed because they believed that they had them in their net. They asked
for a battle the next day. When the King heard this, he felt pained because it
was Sunday and asked through Brother Guerin that they wait till Monday.
The count refused him as he believed that the King wanted to run away.
Upon this, Brother Guerin went back and Count Renaud accompanied him
for a while. When Count Renaud came back, Messire Hugh of Boves said in
front of Emperor Otto and the Count of Flanders: "Hah! Count of Boulogne,
what sort of treason have you concocted with Brother Guerinl" "Obviously,"
said the count, "you are lying like the wicked traitor that you are, and your
words show well that you are Ganelon's kin. You must know that in case of
battle, I will either be killed or taken but you, you will run away like a vile
coward and liar!"
The dispute remained thus and Brother Guerin came back to the King and
told him: "Sire, may God help you! You will have the battle tomorrow
without fail. It is necessary that you call up your battalions." Then the King
called up his battalions and put them under the command of the ten most
valorous men he had. And the Emperor Otto and the Count of Flanders and
Count Renaud and Count William Longsword who was the brother of the
King of England - who had sent him as he himself was in Poitou at La Roche
fighting against My Lord Louis whp was giving him a very hard time - these
aforementioned great lords were parceling France out and were each
reserving part for themselves. Count Ferrand wanted Paris, Count Renaud
wanted Normandy, and the Emperor wanted Orleans and Chartres and
Estampes, and Hugh of Boves wanted Amiens, and in this way they each
picked their share.
It takes but a few hours for God to do his work
And he who laughs in the morning
Will cry in the evening.
Thus was Saturday, and when Sunday morning came, the King got up and
had all his people at Tournai assembled fully armed with their banners
unfurled and their trumpets sounding and all their echelons in formation.
Translator's note: Translated directly into English from the Old French.
'""'\
DOCUMENTS 215
They marched till they came into view of a bridge called Bouvines. There was
a chapel there and the King had mass held as it was still morning. The mass
was sung for the King by the Bishop of Tournai and the King listened to it
fully armed. And when mass was over, the King had bread and wine brought
to him and had the bread sliced into pieces. He took one and ate it. And then
he said to all those around him: "I beg my loyal friends who are here to eat
with me in memory of the twelve apostles who drank and ate with our Lord.
And if one of you is thinking of wickedness and treachery, let him stay
away." Then Messire Enguerrand of Coucy came forward and took the first
slice, and the Count Gaucher of Saint-Pol took the second and said to the
King: "Sire, today will show who is going to be your traitor!" And he said
these words because he well knew the King suspected him on account of evil
gossip. Then, the Count of Sancerre took the third slice and all the other
barons followed; there was such a press that they could not get to the hanap.
And when the King saw this, he was gladdened and told them: "Lords, you
are all my men and I am your Sire, regardless of whomever I might be. I have
much loved you and brought you great honor and given you largely of what
was mine. I have never wronged or failed you but I have always led you
rightfully. For God's sake, I beg you all today to protect my body and my
honor, and yours as well. And if you think that the crown would be better
served by one of you, I agree to it and want it with good heart and good
will." Upon hearing this, the barons all cried for pity and said: "Sire, for
God's sake, we do not want any King but you. Ride bravely against your
enemies, we are ready to die with you." Then the King climbed on a horse
and all the barons, strong and confident, did too, with their banners unfurled
and each in his conroi. Then you could see the Flemings arriving in a
disorderly manner, [stepping] in front of each other and carrying ropes to
bind the French. And the King had pulled back toward the side of the hill so
that the sun would face the enemy. When the Flemings saw him turn toward
the hill, they said to each other that they must be running away. They vied to
throw themselves first against the French and the French received them
vigorously, and soon they were the first to be defeated. This was because the
Count of Saint-Pol went around the host, attacked them in the rear, and
threw himself at them like a lion, and it was a marvel how much he
accomplished with his weapons and his body. All the other barons were
proving themselves so well, that they were all above reproach. Oudarz of
Reson, who carried the banner of Champagne and by right led its battalion,
had gone so far ahead that he came upon Count Renaud. These were the two
men on earth who hated each other the most and who had caused the
aggravation of the present conflict. When Count Renaud saw him, he was so
elated that not even God could have held down his feet and he charged him
while the Count of Saint-Pol charged him [Renaud] in turn. They were all
tangled up in a large melee and they injured each other severely so long they
were fighting.
But the King's strength grew as that of the Flemings diminished because
they were in the wrong and were there by a wicked agreement. Then the
hosts engaged each other everywhere and many were killed. The Count of
216 DOCUMENTS
Saint-Pol did not relent and persevered till he took Count Renaud by force.
When he was taken, the Flemings all lost heart. Then the French rejoiced and
charged Ferrand's echelon; he was taken along with the Count of Ponthieu
and Messire William Longsword and many great lords not named in the
accounts. When Emperor Otto saw that all was lost, he turned his horse
around and took flight along with Hugh of Boves. And the Emperor went
away to Germany and died some time later in a mean house, poor and
miserable. And Hugh of Boves went on a boat to go to the King in England.
But God who gives protection to good and none to evil, took his protection
away from him and caused a great storm over the sea and he was drowned.
And all of what was left of the host was captured and defeated. The King was
told that Ferrand was taken along with Count Renaud and the Count of
Ponthieu and his brother and William Longsword and many other great men.
Then the King asked: "Why have we not captured the Emperor?" And you
must know that no one had mentioned the Emperor but he brought the
matter up because he wanted a greater victory as there is more honor in
defeating an Emperor than a vassal.
In this way the battle ended and the King with great rejoicing returned to
Tournai with all his prisoners while the Flemings were in great mourning.
This defeat occurred in the year of Our Lord 1214, in the month of July, on
the second Sunday. And on that day My Lord Louis well and truly defeated
King John at La Roche-aux-Moines in Poitou. The next day, the King went
to Lille and had it burned and had all the good towns of Flanders fortified
and garrisoned. The King came back to France with all his prisoners and put
Ferrand in the Louvres in Paris, which he had wanted, and the Count Renaud
in the Goulet, since he had wanted Normandy, and the other prisoners were
put where he wished. King Philip lived in peace ever after and was feared and
respected all over the land.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XXVI, pp. 538-41
VII TRUCE BETWEEN PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND
JOHN LACKLAND
Philip, King of France by the grace of God, gives greetings to all those whom
these present letters will reach. Let it be known that to John the King of the
English and to his men and dependants who fought openly for him in this
past war, we grant an honest truce, involving ourselves, our men and
dependants who openly fought from the Thursday following the exaltation
of the Holy Cross in September to the Easter of the year of Out Lord 1214,
and from this Easter on for five continuous and entire years without,
however, affecting the prisoners we have made and also with the exception of
the pledges the towns of Flanders and Hainaut, and the knights of Flanders
Translator's note: Translated into English from the French translation of the Latin.
DOCUMENTS 217
and Hainaut, have sworn to us and, similarly, excepting the prisoners King
John now holds.
We, our men and dependants, will keep the positions we are occupying on
this Thursday this truce is given. And King John of England, his men, and his
dependants similarly will remain in the positions they are on the said
Thursday till the five years have passed.
No murderer nor anyone banned for other reason by us since the previous
truce between us and the King of England may enter into our lands during
this period of time except with our permission. Likewise, no murderer nor
anyone .banned for other reasons by the King of England may enter his lands
during this period of time except with the permission of the aforementioned
King John.
However, if someone whose land is within [the confines of] our power
comes into our domain to see to his affairs, he will be allowed to pass
through but not to stay, and no excuse will be accepted as legitimate, except
if he is in a port where he legitimately can wait for favorable winds.
If someone from the counties of Anjou or Brittany, who on the aforesaid
Thursday of the truce was a partisan of King John of England, having openly
waged war against us and having openly supported King John, wanted to
enter into the above named counties of Anjou or Brittany and live there
before the end of the truce, let the Seneschal of Anjou, if the county of Anjou
is involved, and the Count of Brittany, if the county of Brittany is involved,
insure security in such a way that he could cause no harm to us or to our
lands.
And if someone from Poitou who on the day of the truce was on our side,
openly waging war against John and openly supporting us against him,
wanted to enter the lands of the King of England in Poitou, let the Seneschal
of Poitou insure adequate security so that he could cause no harm to King
John or to his lands.
The arbiters and maintainers of this truce between us and King John are,
on King John's behalf, Hubert of Bourg, Seneschal of Poitou, Renaud of
Pont, the Abbot of Saint-jean-d'Angely, and the Superior of Saintes; and on
our side, Peter of Savary, Guy Turpin, the Abbot of Marmoutiers, and Geoffrey
Archdeacon of Tours. They have all sworn in good faith that if it should
happen that one of them died or was revoked by us or by King John within
the time of the truce, they would elect and put in his place another suitable
arbiter.
Whatever five or more of the above named arbiters tell or ask us to do
under oath regarding the interpretation of this document, we will be beld to
it as well as the King of England.
And if it was not possible to correct something through the intermediary of
these arbiters, we will in good faith do the correction ourselves within sixty
days or less, after the arbiters have expressed their will and we have been
notified of it.
e In the case of discords and incorrect interpretations that might arise in
Poitou in the counties of Anjou 'and of Brittany, and in Touraine, the arbiters
of this truce will gather near the nunnery of Fougereuse, near Passavant, and
I"
"'""t
I
"
!~
218 DOCUMENTS
for the difficulties that might arise in Berry, in Auvergne, in the county of the
Marche and in the Limousin, they will meet between Aiguerande and Cuson,
at the castle of the Count of Marche.
As to the maltolte King John of England and his people impose and collect,
we will come to an agreement as follows: if King John gives it up and cancels
it, we likewise will give it up and cancel it. But if, on the contrary, King John
of England and his people persist in imposing and collecting it, we and our
people likewise will impose and collect it.
Frederick, King of the Romans and of Sicily, can, if he so wishes, enter into
our side of the truce. Likewise, King Otto, if he so wishes, can enter into the
truce of the King of England. And if one or the other does not want to
participate in it, we can assist Frederick for the Empire, and the King of
England can likewise assist Otto for the Empire, without wrongdoing and
without causing a war between John and ourselves in regard to our lands.
Having sworn to hold this truce in good faith and on our behalf, Ursin, the
Chamberlain, and all those we have asked to subscribe to it, that is, Gauthier,
Count of Saint-Pol, Robert, Count of Alencon, Guy of Dampierre, William
des Barres, William of Chauvigny, Thibaut of Blois, Bouchard of Marly,
Johel of Mayence, Hugh of Beaucy, Guy the Seneschal, Aymery of Crayon,
Giraud of Blois.
Given at Chinon, in the year of Our Lord 1214, in the month of September
on the Thursday following the exaltation of the Holy Cross. On the
Thursday preceding All Saints' Day, the sixteenth year of our reign, the act of
the truces signed by the Lord King and the King of England was delivered to
the Lord Bishop of Gloucester. It was sealed with the seal of the King of
France.
VIII AGREEMENT BETWEEN PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND THE
COUNTESS OF FLANDERS
I, Joan, Countess of Flanders and of Hainaut, make it known to all those
who will see these letters that I have sworn to my lord, the illustrious King of
the Franks, that I will give him or his envoy, at Peronne, on this Thursday
preceding All Saints Day, the son of the Duke of Louvain, and that I will tear
down the fortresses of Valenciennes, Ypres, Audenarde, Cassel, in such a
way that they will be destroyed according to the will of the Lord King and
they will not be rebuilt unless he so wishes. And all the other fortresses of
Flanders will remain the way they are now and will in no way be reinforced,
and no other fortress can be built unless the King so wishes.
John of Nesle, Casrellan of Bruges, and Siger, Castellan of Ghent, and all
the other men of the King will receive back their lands and will hold them in
peace. The other men of Flanders and of Hainaut who have sworn the truce
or who will decide to swear this peace will recover their land.
Once all these clauses have been executed as they are stated, the King will
Translator'snote: Translatedinto English from the French translation of the Latin.
DOCUMENTS 219
decide according to his wishes the amount of the war ransoms for my Lord
Ferrand, Count of Flanders and of Hainaut, and my other men from Flanders
and Hainaut.
The Count of Boulogne and the others who are from other lands do not
enter into this agreement.
Those who have signed this agreement and sworn to keep it loyally are
Sibyl, Lady of Wavres, Arnoul of Audenarde, Race of Wavre, Gilbert of
Borquelles, Michael the High Constable, Gilles of Aignemont, Peter of
Douai, Gerard of Cologne, Philip of Arnais, Gerard of Jace, William the
Uncle, Gilles of Berboncheres, Gauthier of Fontaines, Alard of Chimay,
Gauthier of Ligne and Gauthier of Lens, Gauthier of Hondschoote, Hugh of
Rou, and Gilles of Tri.
... Given at Paris, in the year of Our Lord 1214, on the Friday
following the feast of the apostles Simon and J ude.
IX ANNALS OF TIEL
In the year 1214, at this same time, the Count of Flanders was taken by the
King of France.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Vol. XXIV, p. 25
X FIRST CONTINUATION OF THE ROYAL CHRONICLE
OF COLOGNE
Then, on the day of Saint-Peter-of-the-Bounds, the Emperor Otto, Pharamond,
Count of Flanders, along with a large army, engaged a battle near Tournai
against the son of the King of France. There was harsh fighting on both sides.
The Count of Flanders, the Count of Tecklemburg were taken along' with
many others. Many others were killed. The emperor himself came back
dishonored.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Vol. XXIV, p. 18
XI SHORT RHYMED CHRONICLE
In the year one thousand and two hundred and ten and four
Off went Ferrand to fight the King
In the month when oats are sown
Translator'snote: Translated into English from the French translation of the Latin.
Translator'snote: Translated into English from the French translation of the Latin.
Translator's note: Translated into English directly from the Old'French.
220 DOCUMENTS
And on Magdalen day
At Bouvines there was a battle
Where many a mail armor was broken.
The Count Ferrand was bound and taken
And was brought to Paris
And many other barons were taken
Who their countries never again did see.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Vol. XXVI, p. 611
XII ANNALS OF OSNEY
1214. This year, King John crossed the sea before Candlemas, to attack
the King of France on one front in Poitou and on another in Flanders.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Vo!. XXVII, p. 489
XIII CHRONICLE OF BURY ST EDMUNDS
King John left for Poitou before Candlemas. There was a battle in Flanders
near Bouvines, on a Sunday, between the King of France and the great men of
the King of England, in the course of which were taken the Counts of
Flanders and of Boulogne, and William, Count of Salisbury, from the King of
England's party. Emperor Otto who was nearby took flight upon seeing the
development of the battle. The general interdict was lifted from England on
the sixth day of July, by order of the Lord Pope Innocent; it had lasted six
years, fourteen weeks, and three days.
Antonia Gransden (ed.), Nelson, London, 1964
XIV MICHELET
The battle of Bouvines, so famous and so national, does not seem to have
been a large action.
It is probable that each army was not made up of more than 15,000 or
20,000 men. Philip, having sent the best part of his knights against John, had
made up part of his army, which he-led himself, from militias from Picardy.
The Belgians allowed Philip to greatly devastate their land (William the
Breton) for a month. He was about to return without meeting the enemy
when he came across him between Lille and Tournai, near the bridge of
Translator's note: Translatedinto English from the French translation of the Latin.
Translator's note: Translatedinto English from the French translation of the Latin.
DOCUMENTS 221
Bouvines (July 27, 1214). The details of the battle have been transmitted to
us through an eye-witness, William the Breton, chaplain to Philip Augustus,
who stood behind him during the battle. Unfortunately, this narrative,
obviously altered by flattery, is even more affected by the servility to the
classics which the poet-historian feels obliged to copy in his Philippiad
modeled on Virgil's Aeneid. Philip must be Aeneas and the emperor must be
Turnus. All that we can be certain of is that our militias were first put in
disorder, that the knights charged several times, that in one of these charges
the King of France's life was in danger, that he was thrown to the ground by
foot soldiers armed with hooks. Emperor Otto had his horse wounded by
William des Barres, brother of Simon de Montfort, Richard Lionheart's
adversary, and was carried along in his people's rout. The glory of courage
but not of victory remained with the Brabancon mercenaries; these old
soldiers, numbering 500, preferred to die rather than to surrender to the
French. The knights were less obstinate, a great number of them were taken.
Under his .heavy armor, an unhorsed man had no recourse other than to
surrender. Five counts fell into Philip Augustus's hands, those of Flanders,
Boulogne, Salisbury, Tecklemburg, and Dortmund. The first two, who were
ransomed by their people, remained Philip Augustus's prisoners. He turned
over other prisoners to be ransomed to the militias of the communes which
had taken part in the battle.
Histoire de France, Vo!. III, p. 93, 1879 (newedn)
XV THE STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS OF BOUVINES
First Window
. .. Otto could very well be represented with, if not a map of France in.hand,
at least with the chart of the coalition, and surrounded by his accomplices
bickering over our country. This is the moral physiognomy which the artist
could give to the main characters without, I believe, betraying historical
veracity.
Otto was of a hypocritical, brutal, and selfish nature.
The Count of Salisbury ... As a military man, his composure and his
) firmness as well as his administrative abilities gave him an-important role at
.~
the London court.... Salisbury was extremely· tall which, because of the
enormous size of his weapons, had caused him to' be nicknamed "William
Longsword. "
Count Renaud of Dammartin was an outstanding military man and
statesman. His main faults were an insatiable ambition, dissolute habits, and
a total lack of ethics. Even though he was married he dragged behind him in
the camps, like a common courtesan, the sister of the Count of Boves who
was herself married. Moreover, he shared a somewhat revolting intimacy
with the Count of Boves.
222 DOCUMENTS DOCUMENTS 223
Fourth Window ARNOUD (of Montreuil, nephew of Renaud of Boulogne):
I would have chosen-to be lost with him
...Despite the brevity and simplicity of the King's prayer, I would like it to be
But right away you predicted his defeat
the subject of a special window because it places the French monarchy under
My Lord. I have been told, this is the way France is,
God's protection in the solemn circumstances of our history.... It ~ould in
It is not frightened by twenty allied kings
no way contradict historical veracity to present a crowned helmet On the
As long as in this world it is God's knight....
ground, at the foot of the altar, in front of the King. This sole fact would give
the window an important allegorical meaning by showing the crown of
France under the direct protection of the Altar.... Do not forget that we
Scene VII
were about to fight one against three, that the struggle was going on to decide
the fate of the nation and that we were expecting to find traitors in our ranks.
GUERIN: Their cause! It is lost.
PHILIP (with enthusiasm):
Twenty-first Window (Foundation of the Abbey of Victory)
And ours, how beautiful it is.
Against the impious prince and the rebellious vassal
I would like to see depicted, at the side of the King, his wife Ingeborg whom
We protect law, justice, and honor,
Philip had kept away from him for twenty years without any legitimate
Backed by France, protected by God,
cause, and whom he had just taken back thanks to the intervention of
We feel the soul of the fatherland within us
Innocent Ill. It is certain that it was at the moment when Philip Augustus
And heaven loves us, and the Church prays for us.
straightened out the moral aspect of his life that he obtained the decisive
To horse, companions, and let the Oriflamme fly into the wind!
success of Bouvines.
Let us march on Flanders! Forward!
The inauguration of the Abbey of Victory brings out the true nature of the
victory of Bouvines, which is the return of the French nation to its role of EVERYBODY: Forward!
Soldier of the Church . . . .
CHORUS (ad libitum: Gounod, [oan of Arc):
H. M. L. Delpech, Notice . . . tiree de son ouvrage it. l'usage Forward! Yes, God calls us.
des artistes-peintres charges de la decoration de l'eglise We are avenging the Almighty.
de Bouvines, pp. 4-5, 11-13,45-6, 1879 Forward! Death is beautiful
To the one who saves the master of kings.
For You there is glory,
Oh Living God, fight with us,
Give us prowess and victory.
XVI DRAMATURGY Forward! Forward!
We shall win, when France and the Church are united,
I. Bouvines. Trilogy in verse with chorus, by R. P. Longhaye, 1879. Christ loves France, He wants to protect it.
It is powerful, it is blessed.
"At Bouvines the Church is threatened as much as France; the 'victory is It is proud in danger.
Catholic as much as national. This is the reason why French historians -give Forward!
obviously resentful accounts of it (Michelet) or at least attempt to lessen it
(H. Martin) while the Germans and even the Protestants are filled with
admiration...." Il, Bouvines. Historical drama in five acts and seven scenes, by A. Fraisse,
1911.
Scene I. The vassals "I have already had played a long time ago, a drama in verses, Les
Champairol, dealing with our 1870 disasters. But 1 did not want to remain
(At the tower of Montreuil-sur-Mer. July 1214. Medieval apartment. At the tied to such a painful impression. This is why I have evoked the national epic
right of the spectator, a table, and next to it, in the foreground, a prie-Dieu.) which was at the dawn of the thirteenth century, the victory our ancestors,
224 DOCUMENTS
who had been given the first freedoms of the communes, won over the
Germans. These two dramas, Les Champairol, Bouvines, which I would like
never to be separated from one another, have been inspired by the same
burning love for the Fatherland."
DOCUMENTS 225
immediately takes on the air of a prelude to the storming of the Bastille.... It
is in our land that anarchy was victorious while in Germany, the
Hohenzollern, imitators of the Capetians, knew in their turn how to
discipline and use feudal power without destroying it. It is thanks to this
power that they were able to take revenge for Bouvines at Sedan.

Act V De Lur-Saluces, in L'Action Francaise, July 8, 1914

THE KING:

But listen to this growing distant rumor

At my call, the heart of the Communes responds.
Their steps make the earth resound like a bridge.
These new soldiers who remember me,
Know they are brave ones.
They will fight at your side, according to my wishes.
I want you to give them a deserved welcome.

You, come defend my crown,

Obscure soldiers whose loyalty surrounds me.
Friends from all regions and all conditions
Diverse, still confused mass, nation
In formation where already the heart of the fatherland
Awakens; foot soldiers, nascent infantry ...
You are going into the red arena of combat,
Laborers, craftsmen, to take your first steps!
Thus today, with your entry into the lists,
Oh troops of the militias, may a new era begin,
And so as to later on be well worthy of France
Let your sons, too, follow in your footsteps ....

XVII POLEMIC
One is reminded that, in the course of many centuries, our kings, crowned at
Reims at the very spot where Clovis was baptized, had faithfully respected
the pact entered by God and him [Clovis] on the field of battle at Tolbiac.
Thus each time the German has attempted to invade the national land, he has
always been chased away. Only the Revolution broke this pact and, since
then, the enemy has been able three times to victoriously cross this border
which a neglected God did not protect any more ... The following is what
M. Lamy has discovered. According to him, Bouvines was a great victory, a
beneficial victory, a "cradle victory," as he so colorfuIly puts it, and Bouvines
deserves all these nice adjectives because on that day the loser was ... the
foreigner, you might guess, the German? the English? the Fleming? Wrong. It
is because the loser was feudalism!!! When looked at in this way, Bouvines

Index
Abelard 111
Academie Prancaise 175
L'Action Francaise 175, 176, 177
Aeneas 150, 154, 156
anathemas 35, 62, 63, 70, 80, 82
Angoulerne, Cathedral of 85-6
Anjou 26, 34, 35, 51, 54, 91, 167,
217
Anjou, Count of (Foulque the
Rechin) 112, 113
Anonymous of Bethune, chronicle
of 58, 117f[, 122, 125, 128,
134,194-7
Aquitaine 26,34,53,80, 135, 146
Aquitaine, Eleanor of 26,51
armor 15,17,18,42,45,48,200,
203
arms see hooks; knives; lances;
swords; weapons
army
of Otto of Brunswick 19,26-30
of Philip Augustus 19,20-6
see also foot-soldiers; knights;
sergeants
Arras 3-4, 25, 30, 35, 44, 137,
158
art 7,16,73,85-6,171-2,221-2
see also Bayeux Tapestry
Artois 25, 26, 31-2, 35
Audenarde, Arnoul of 30,48, 125,
126,127,196-7,213
Auxerre, Count of (Perron) 47
Auxerre, Count of (Pierre of
Courtenay) 23, 47
Avenas, altar sculptures at 73
Avranches, Gerold of 98-9
Axpoel, battle of 113,114,116
Barbarossa, Frederick 74,80
Bar, Count of, Henry 23, 24, 40,
44,126
des Barres, William (the 'Barrois')
24,40,44,45,46,126,127,
195-6,212,221
battle
nature of 13, 110-21
see also Axpoel; Bouvines;
Bremule; Courcelles; fear, in
battle; Hastings; killing,
avoidance of; Leipzig; Muret;
Tinchebray; Val-des-Dunes;
war-cries
battle-field see under Bouvines
Bayeux Tapestry 112, 123
Beaumont, Count of 23,24,41,42,
199
Beauvais, Bishop of (Philip of
Dreux) 24, 100, 122-3, 172,
200-1
Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint 85, 90,
111
Book of Praise of the New
Chivalry 99-100
Bethune, Robert of 58, 128, 196
INDEX
Bethune see Anonymous of Bethune
Blois, Thibaut of 70, 113
Boulogne, Countess of 29,88
Boulogne, Count of (Renaud of
Dammartin) 14,29,30,35, 88,
89,221
in accounts of Bouvines 147, 148,
149-50,151, 156, 178,
192-3,196,197,201-3,
205f[, 209, 213,214-16,219
at Bouvines 37, 46, 47-50,109,
119, 123, 128, 133
as a prisoner 49, 51, 122, 125,
127, 134, 137
Bourges, Archbishop of 65,69
Bouvines
battle of: 7th centenary of
174-7; approaches to history
of 1-6; councils before
117-18,130,154; historical
accounts of 167-79; major
chronicles of 2-10, 13, 16, 19,
37-54,57-8,122-37,141,
192-7; minor chronicles of
143-66,205-8,214-16,
219-20; myths of 148-66,
221-5; participants in 13-15,
18-30,44,106-7,122-9;
preliminary rituals of 117-21;
site of 30-1, 39, 113, 119;
victory procession after 52-3,
136,157,169,207-8; William
the Breton's prose account of
6-10, 13, 16, 19, 37-54, 119,
123, 128, 129, 141, 147, 150,
169, 178
church of 171-2,173,174,177,
221-2
as place of pilgrimage 173-4
Boves, Hugh of 14, 30, 47, 109,
150,205,206,207,214,216,
221
Brabancons 30, 48, 79-84, 133-4,
169,176,206,221
see also cottereaux; foot-soldiers;
manades; routiers
Brabant37,48,50,79
227
Brabant, Duke of 28,37,54,58,
205
Bremule, battle of 113, 115-16
Brittany, Count of 53,113,217
Bruges, Galbert of 78, 105-6, 107,
116
Burgundy 26, 73, 145
Burgundy, Duke of (1155) 72
Burgundy, Duke of (Eudes) 23,
41f[, 89, 91, 95,118,124,
126, 127, 147, 151, 194,
195-6, 199
Bury St Edmunds, Chronicle of 220
Cathars 64, 82, 130-1, 146, 151
centenary, 7th, of battle of Bouvines
174-7
Champagne 26, 41, 42, 47, 145
Chanson d'Aspremont 93
Chanson de Guillaume le Marechal
65, 74, 86, 89-96, 100, 102,
104, 130, 149
chanting see psalmody
Charlemagne 22, 101, 156, 160,
163
Charles the Good 71, 84, 86, 89,
106, 107
Charlot, Prince (Bishop of Noyon)
8,21
Chateau-Gaillard, siege of 9, 29
Chester, Count of (Renoul) 53
'children', bands of 67
chivalry 96, 102-4, 108
see also knights; tournaments
chronicles see Anonymous of
Bethune; Flandria generosa;
Liege, Canon of; Relatio
Marchianensis de Pugna
Bovinis; and under Bouvines,
battle of; William the Breton
Church, the 33, 40, 41,100, 176-7
corruption of 130-3
culture and 1-3, 8, 98,100-1
peace and 63-7, 74-5
Philip Augustus and 20-1,
133-5
tournaments and 85, 94
228
Church, the (cont):
war and 58-64, 70
see also anathemas;
excommunication; heresy;
Innocent Ill; Lateran Councils;
Leo XIII; monasticism; power,
ecclesiastical; Urban 11
churches, sanctuary in 105-6, 114
Cistercians 131, 145
class see order, social
Clermont, Council of 63, 85
Cluny, Abbey of 70-1, 76, 83
Abbot of 64
Cologne, Royal Chronicle of 219
communes 25-6, 44, 69-70, 103,
169,170, 173, 175
conrois 93, 128, 129
cottereaux 79-84,96, 100, 151
see also Brabancons; foot-
soldiers; manades; routiers
councils, before battle of Bouvines
of Otto of Brunswick 130, 206
of Philip Augustus 117-18, 154
courage, knightly 102-4
Courcelles, battle of 137
Le Couronnement de Louis 21, 165
Courteheuse, Robert 77, 78, 114
Courtenay, Philip of 118
crown, the
concept of 21-2, 71, 72-3
of France 22, 160-5, 168-72,
222
crusades 24, 33, 62, 63, 64, 75, 88,
95, 101, 102-3
see also Holy Land
culture 1-3, 6, 8, 97-103, 142-3
see also art; history; literacy;
poems; verse; the Church
Dammartin, Count of (Aubry) 50
Denis, Saint 14, 23
Denmark, Ingeborg of 20-1, 35,
141,146,222
Dortmund, Count of (Conrad) 37,
46
Dreux, Count of (Robert) 23, 24,
29,47,51, 125
INDEX
Dreux, Philip of (Bishop of
Beauvais) 24, 100, 122-3
eagle, German 40, 45, 46, 119, 136,
199,204
Ecluse, Gauthier of 101
England 90, 145, 149-50
excommunication 62-3, 65
of John Lackland 27
of Otto of Brunswick 28, 34, 40,
119,130,131,147
fairs 91-2, 94
fear, in battle 127
feudalism see order, social
Fitz Neal, Richard, Dialogue de
l'ecbiquier 76
Flanders 31, 35, 37, 38, 50, 54,
67-8,71,77,78,86,105-6,
107,113, 141, 144-5
chronicle of see Flandria generosa
Flanders, Count of (one generation
pre-Bouvines) 87, 91
Flanders, Count of (Baudoin) 103
Flanders, Count of, Charles (in
1125) see Charles the Good
Flanders, Count of, Ferrand 21,24,
28,35,41,44,46,49,52,120,
128, 147, 148, 152, 153, 155,
159,171,176, 192ff., 200,
205ff., 208-9, 213, 214, 216,
219 ff.
Flanders, Count of (Robert) 71, 77
Flanders, Count of (Thierry) 72
Flanders, Counts of see Genealogic
des comtes de Flandres
Flanders, Count of, William·Cliton
111,114
Flanders, Countess of 218-19
Flanders, Countess-Mother of Duke
of 13, 52, 133, 137
Flandria generosa 57, 118, 119,
120, 161
Flowers of History 149-50
Fontaine, Gauthier of 24
Fontaine, Hugh of 24, 48
INDEX
foot-soldiers 15, 17,78-9,92,107,
148
in battle of Bouvines 14, 18, 19,
24-6,44,123,129,201
see also Brabancons; communes;
cottereaux; hooks; knives;
manades; routiers
France
crown of 22 j 160-5, 168-72
image of 155-7
northern 67-73,100-1,144;
tournaments in 87, 89-96
southern 26,64-7, 100
see also Francia
Francia 22, 26, 144, 154-5
Franco, General 179
Frederick 11, King of Germany 28,
34,136,147,204,218
Furnes, Buridan of 13-14, 30, 42
de Galliffet, General 172
Garlande, William of 24,40,44,
46,129
Gauthier the Young 24, 40, 46
Genealogic des comtes de Flandres
82
genealogies 22, 82, 94, 101-2,
112-13
see also heraldry
Germany, accounts of battle from
148-9
Gestes de Philippe Auguste 8
Ghistelle, Gauthier of 30, 42, 196
Grandes Chroniques de France 168
Grisegonelle, Geoffrey 112
Guerin, Bishop-Elect of Senlis 24,
38,39,41,42,48,99,117,
118, 122-3, 124, 127, 155,
194,203,214
Guines, Count of, Arnoul23, 29,
86,87-8,101,147,195
Guines, Count of, Baudouin 101
Hadengue, A. 177
Hainaut 30,37,38,50,54
Hainaut, Count of, Baudouin 89,
90
229
Hainaut, lsabel of 22
Harmes, Michael 43
Hastings, battle of 112, 113, 114
Henry I, King of England
(Beauclerc) 68, 77, 114,
115-16
Henry 11, King of England 28, 50,
80,89, 111
Henry V, Emperor 71
Henry the Young 81, 89, 90-1, 95
heraldry 18-19, 91,211
heresy 61,65,66-7,82,130-1
Albigensian 33, 133, 135
see also Cathars
Histoire anonyme de la premiere
croisade 102-3
Histoire des rois des Francs 7
Historia regnum Francorum 130
history
approaches to 4-6
nature of 1-4
oral 142
written 6-10,142-3
see also culture; and under
Bouvines, battle of
Holland, Count of 28, 147,205,
206
Holy Land 20, 33, 89, 99
see also crusades
Holy Roman Empire 21-2, 27-8,
34, 145
hooks 16-17,44, 106
horses 14, 15, 16, 18,91-2, 148,
150
in battle 41-2, 43, 45, 47-8,
108,200,202
Hospitalers 24, 38, 99-100
I1e-de-France 26,29,65,91, 109
Innocent III (Luther of Segni), Pope
28,33-4,35,64,75,83,220
inscriptions
on Arras gate 3-4, 137, 158
on obelisk 4,171,175
Isidor of Seville, saint 60
Italy 27-8,34
Itier, Bernard 146
230
Jews 13, 136, 151
joan of Arc, Saint 174
John Lackland ('Bluntsword'), King
of England 26-7, 33-4, 75,
108,168,169,216-18,220
in the chronicles 51, 53, 54, 58,
145, 146, 150, 151-2, 192,
196,205-6,214,216
the Church and 41, 75, 130-1,
145, 150, 151-2, 169
money and 30, 37, 150
in Poitou 38, 53, 54, 135
Journal des Debats 172
July Monarchy 168-9
justice 70, 71, 73
killing, avoidance of 106-7, 110,
116, 125
kings 90, 112
inviolability of 115 -16, 125,
134, 156, 159-60
see also the crown; John
Lackland; Otto of Brunswick;
Philip Augustus
knights 14-19, 61-2, 102~4
in accounts of Bouvines 40-9,
51,147-8,150
at Bouvines 19,23-4,28-30,
106-7,122,123-9
money and 77-8, 104
tournaments and 85- 97
knives 17,45,81, 127, 129
ladies 13-14,95,96,102
Lambert of Liege, Saint 14, 57-8,
120
Lamy, E. 175-6
lances 16, 85-6, 106
Lateran Councils, First and Second
63
Lateran Council, Third 63, 74, 82,
85
Latin 9, 57-8,101,143
Lautersberg, chronicle of 148
Lavisse, E. 172
Course 173
(ed.), Histoire de France 4
INDEX
Lebon, M. 171
Leipzig, battle of 174,175
Le Journal 175
Leo XIII, Pope 173
Liege, Canon of 14, 57-8, 131
Vita Odiliae 117 H., 131
Lille 35, 38,171,175,216
Limburg, Duke of 37, 47
Limoges 81, 146
literacy 97, 101, 143
de Locre, Ferry 4
Longchamp, R. P. 174, 222-3
Longchamp, Stephen (the 'Unlucky')
24,40,44,45,125
Loto des Dates 178
Louis VI, King of France 7, 68-71,
77,113,115-16
Louis VII, King of France 20, 71-3,
83
Louis IX, King of France 141
Louis XI, King of France 142
Louis, Prince (Lord of Artois) 21 H.,
26,35,37,38,54,130,135,
147,149,195,205,214,216
Louis, Saint 21, 72, 147, 167,
178
Louvain, Duke of (Henry) 47, 127,
195,205,210
loyalty 25-6,126-7
Malenghin, Eustache of 42, 125,
208
de Malleray, Captain H. 174
manades 83, 90
see also Brabancons; cottereaux;
foot-soldiers; manades; routiers
Marchiennes see Relatio
Marchianensis de Pugna
Bovinis
Marcq, River 30-1
Mareuil, Hugh 'of 24, 44, 208
Mareuil, John of 24, 44
Martel, Charles 132
Martel, GeoHrey 113
Martin of Tours, Saint, chronicle of
84
Mauvoisin, Guy 44
INDEX
Mauvoisin, Peter 24, 40, 45, 129,
212
Melun, Viscount of 23,38,39,41,
43, 117, 195
mercenaries 17, 30, 68-9, 76-7,
78-84
Merlin 51, 101
Merovingians 7, 22
Mezeray 171
Histoire de France 168
Michelet 169,174,220-1
militias, parish 65, 69, 83
Minstrel of Reims 159-60, '162-3,
164-5,214-16
de Mol, Antoine 4
monarchy see the crown
monasticism 98 -1 00
see also Cistercians
money
growing use of 18, 32, 59, 75,
76-8, 80-1, 88, 97
John Lackland and 30, 37, 150
tournaments and 88, 91,93-7
war and 16, 18,30,35,37,
76-8,80-1,104,137
Montfort, Amaury of 70
de Montfort, Simon 26, 133,
146
Montgardin, Philip of 101
Montigny, Galon of 44, 159, 195,
199
'Montjoie-Saint Denis' 70, 158,
209-11
Montmorency, Mathew of 23,41,
42, 195
Mortemer, William of 24
Mousquet, Philip, chronicle of 158,
159,160,161,162,208-14
Muret, battle of 33, 146
narratives see chronicles
Nesle, John of 23, 48, 127, 201,
203,209,218
Nevers, Count of 51,54, 70
Nithard 84
Normandy 24, 25, 26, 34, 67, 68,
91, 145, 167
231
Noyon, Bishop of (Prince Chariot)
7,21
obelisk, on battle-field of Bouvines
4, 171, 175
Odile, Saint, biography of 57
Orange, William of 98-9
Order of the Hospital 24, 38,
99-100
Orderic Vital see Vital, 'Orderic
order, social 14-15, 17, 25, 32, 34,
61-2,77-8,133,149,170,
173 H., 224-5
see also communes; the crown;
kings; knights
Order of the Temple 99-100, 123,
131
Oriflamme 7, 23, 39, 44, 70, 109,
119, 153, 156, 158-9, 175,
199
Orleans, Bishop of (Monsignor
Touchet) 176-7
Orval, Gilles of 57-8
Osney, Annals of 220
Ostemale, Bernard of 37,46, 196,
212
Otto of Brunswick, King of
Germany 27-8, 135
in accounts of Bouvines 37-54,
145, 147ff., 153, 154, 158,
159, 169, 172, 176, 178.,
193-7,199,204,205-7,210,
211-13,214,216,219,220,
221
army of 19, 26-30
at Bourines 14,35, 119, 128-33
excommunication of 28, 34, 40,
119, 130, 131, 147, 192
politics and 34, 130-3, 141
Pallas Athene 14,44
Paris 8, 22, 26, 50, 51, 136, 141,
175,197,216
Paris, Matthew 145
parlements 110, 111
peace
attitudes to 58-75, 76
232
peace (cont.):
God's 62-8, 72-3
tournaments and 86
the White Capes and 66-7
Peronne 35, 37, 38, 50, 51, 197
Philip Augustus, King of France
7-8,20-3,25,29,34,53,54,
65,67,73,83,90,111-12,
141-2,216-19
in accounts of Bouvines 37-54,
146, 147, 148, 149-50,
159-65,168,169,171,178,
193-7,205-16,219-24
army of 19, 20-6
at Bouvines 84, 109, 117-18,
125, 128-9, 158
the Church and 20-1, 133-5
founding of Victory Abbey by 34,
54,141-2
in the Philippiad 13-14,123,
131-3,135,136,150-7,158,
197-205
politics of 28,34-5, 74-5
Philip Hurepel, Prince 21, 29
Philippiad, the 13-14, 123, 131-3,
135, 136, 150-7, 158,
197-205,221
Philip of Swabia, King of Germany
27
Picardy 23, 24, 26, 30, 35
plaid 73, 110, 111, 116
plunder 105-6, 109
poems see Le Couronnement de
Louis; the Philippiad; songs;
verse
Poitiers, Counts of 112, 113
Poitou 25, 37, 38, 51, 53, 54,135,
205,214,216,217
politics, 13th-century 32-5,97,
141
see also Philip Augustus; power;
and under Otto of Brunswick
Pope, the see Innocent Ill; Leo XIII;
Urban 11
positivism, in study of history 5
power
art and 73
INDEX
ecclesiastical 15, 62-4, 65, 69,
75
modern 178 - 9
secular 9,14-15,21,22,32-3,
64-5,68,69, 73
see also the Church; the crown
primogeniture, royal 21
prisoners 19, 44, 46, 48, 49-54,
106-8, 127-8, 134, 137, 148
prizes, in tournaments 95-6
procession, victory 52-3, 136, 157,
169,207-8
psalmody, during battle 9, 40-1,
120-1
pseudo-Denys the Areopagite 69
Puylaurens, William of 14
Ramrode, Gerard of 37,46
ratione peccati 63, 75
Reims, Archbishop of 72,80
Reims, Council of 63, 70, 85
Reims see Minstrel of Reims
Relatio Marchianensis de Pugna
Bovinis 57,117,118,119,120,
129,192-3
Republic, French 169-78
retreat, tactical 109, 118
Richard Lionheart 24, 26,27,28,
34,50,74-5,80,83-4,86,
90, 136, 137
Richer of Senones, chronicle of
158-9,161-~166,170-1
Rigord 7-9, 21,83,178
Gestes de Philippe Auguste 7
Histoire des rois des Francs 7
Robert Courteheuse 77, 78, 114
de la Roche, William 51
Roger of Wendover, Flowers of
History 149-50, 205-8
Roman de Brut 102
routiers 79-84, 100, 133-4, 169
see also Brabancons; cottereaux;
foot-soldiers; manades
Rouvray, John of 24,44,48
royalists 176
Roye, Bartholomew of 24, 40, 46,
129
INDEX
Sabbath see Sunday
Saint-Denis, Abbey of 6-7,9-10,
22, 71, 158
7th centenary of Bouvines at
174-7
Abbot of 6, 69
chronicles of 134
necropolis of 7,22, 134, 135
Saint-Martial of Limoges,
Monastery of 81, 146
Saint-Martin-of-Tours, chronicle of
158
Saint-Pol, Count of (Gaucher of
Chatillon/Gauthier) 23, 24, 29,
38,41,42,43,89,126,127,
130,160,199,207,215-16
Saint-Suzanne, Viscount of 51
Saint-Valery, Thomas of 24,46,
48-9,134
Saint-Victor, Abbey of 34, 141-2
Saleinbier, Canon 173-4
Salisbury, Count of, William the
'Longsword' 28, 37, 50-1, 90,
102,122,147, 149, 172, 196,
200-1,205,206,210,213,
214,216,220,221
Sancerre, Count of 151, 160,215
sanctuary, in churches 105-6, 114
scouts 15, 108
Senlis 54, 141-2
see also Guerin
sergeants 15,16,19,24,41-2,44,
46 H., 124, 170
Soissons 25, 42
Soissons, Council of 70, 72
Soissons, Count of 23, 196
songs 65, 74,96,97,98
see Chanson d'Aspremont;
Chanson de Guillaume le
Marechal; also poems; verse
Spain 13, 33
speeches, before battle 114-15,
119-20
of Philip Augustus 161-3,
168
Suger, Abbot 7, 22,69, 71, 77, 85
Sunday, sanctity of 1, 62, 118, 119,
233
130, 147, 149-50, 168, 198,
206,214
swords 15, 16
Tecklemburg, Count of (Othe) 37,
46,~19,221
Templars 99-100,123,131
textbooks, history
19th-century 169, 171, 172-3
20th-century 173-4, 177-8
texts, 13th-century see chronicles
Therouanne, peace of 67, 68, 71
Thierry, Augustin 169-70
Lettres sur /'histoire de France
171
Thomas, brother, chronicle of 163,
166
Thouars, Viscount of 53
Tiel, annals of 219
Tinchebray, battle of 114,117
Tournai30, 35, 38, 39, 109, 194,
214
Bishop of 159, 215
tournaments 84-97, 99, 104, 122
de la Tournelle, Peter 24, 47,
202-3
Tours 63, 64
towns 16, 79
trade, growth of 59
treuga Domini 62-3, 64
Tristan, Peter 24, 44
Trojans 22
truce
of God 62-3, 64, 68, 70
between Philip Augustus and
John Lackland 53, 135-6,
216-18
la Truie, GerardZd, 40, 44, 45,
129,211-12
Tuscany, Thomas of 158
Urban 11, Pope 63
Ursperg, chronicle of 27, 148
Val-des-Dunes, battle of 113
Verbruggen, J. F., De Krijgskunst in
234 INDEX
Verbruggen, J. F. (cant):
West Europa in de
Middleeuwen 5, 19, 128
vernacular 10, 58, 101
verse see Chanson d'Aspremont;
Chanson de Guillaume le
Marechal; Roman de Brut; see
also poems; songs
Victory, Abbey of 34,54, 141-2,
222
victory, celebration of 52-3, 136,
157, 169
Vincent of Beauvais, Miroir
historical 147
Vital, Orderic 63, 69-70, 78, 79,
98,99,116
Vita Odiliae 117 ff., 131
Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae
Historica 57
war 77-109
attitudes to 16, 19, 58-64, 110
holy 62, 63; see also crusades
just 60-1, 62, 69, 70, 98, 104-5,
179
money and 16, 18,30,35,37,
76-8,80-1,104,137
see also battle; war-cries
war-cries 70, 158, 209-11
weapons 15-18, 60, 62,97
see also hooks; knives; lances;
swords
Weygand, General 177-8
White Capes 66-7, 81
William the Breton 8-9, 221
Grandes Chroniques de France
168
Philippiad 13-14,123,131-3,
135,136,150-~ 158,
197-205,221
prose account of 6-10, 13, 16,
19,37-54,119,123,128,129,
141,147,150,169, 178,
220-1
William the Conqueror 68,77,113,
114,116
William, Marshal of England 65,
86-7,89-96,100,103, 104,
114-15,149
see also Chanson de Guillaume le
Marechal
William Rufus 68-9, 77,108,111
women see ladies
Index by Elizabeth Clutton