Abstract
The early thirteenth-century French text known as the History of William Marshal tells the story of its eponymous hero’s lengthy career in the service of the first Plantagenet monarchs. Set against the background of ongoing conflicts between the Capetian king Philip II of France and his great rivals, Henry II of England and his sons Richard and John, the poem is an invaluable source for the political and cultural history of the period. Warfare, both serious and recreational, forms a central motif as William Marshal develops into a figure of unmatched chivalric prowess. While his skills on the battlefield and on the tournament circuit are duly celebrated, the poem offers a far more complex picture of medieval warfare and its emotional repercussions than simple hero-worship would allow. As the brief quote above suggests, the habitual conflicts of a ruling elite that viewed warfare as its very raison d’être gave rise to serious moral questions for contemporary observers. The absence of peace and the advent of war could be construed as a direct result of emotional excess (envy, pride), while military successes and failures could be shown as both reflecting and bringing forth emotional crises on the part of participants. Here I examine several episodes of warfare in the History, reaching back as far as the reign of King Stephen in the 1140s, in order to demonstrate how frequently and effectively the poem’s author makes use of the language of emotions.
‘… so great were the misdeeds done/ that arrogance, envy, and overweening pride,
ever wont to sow discord,/ would not accept peace’.
History of William Marshal, lines 8061–4.
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Notes
On the biographical nature of the poem, including a thorough discussion of what can be known about its authorship and composition, see David Crouch, ‘Writing a Biography in the Thirteenth Century: The Construction and Composition of the “History of William Marshal”’, in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. David Bates, Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), 221–35.
The first among these was Sidney Painter, William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933). Also notable, especially for displaying the somewhat idiosyncratic approach of the great French historian’s later work, is Georges Duby, William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry, trans. Richard Howard (London: Faber, 1986). The best is undoubtedly David Crouch, William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219, 2nd edn (London and New York: Longman, 2002). On the manuscript history see Crouch, William Marshal, 3.
A. J. Holden, S. Gregory and D. Crouch, eds, History of William Marshal, 3 vols (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2002–06). Quotes from the text and translation are taken from this edition.
John Gillingham, ‘War and Chivalry in the History of William the Marshal’, in Anglo-Norman Warfare, ed. Matthew Strickland (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1992), 251–63, at 253. Gillingham’s essay, with its devastating critique of Duby, originally appeared in Thirteenth Century England, 2 (1988), 1–13.
Henry the Young King was crowned as joint ruler with his father in 1170 but died in 1183, thus never gaining the opportunity to rule in his own right. See R. J. Smith, ‘Henry Il’s Heir: The Acta and Seal of Henry the Young King, 1170–83’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), 297–326.
On the Plantagenet domains of the so-called ‘Angevin Empire’ see Martin Aurell, The Plantagenet Empire 1154–1224, trans. D. Crouch (Harlow: Longman, 2007); and John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd edn (London: Arnold, 2001). For William’s connections to Eleanor, Evelyn Mullally, ‘The Reciprocal Loyalty of Eleanor of Aquitaine and William Marshal’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, ed. B. Wheeler and J. C. Parsons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 237–45.
Larry D. Benson, ‘The Tournament in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes and L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal’, in Contradictions: From Beowulf to Chaucer. Selected Studies of Larry D. Benson, ed. Theodore M. Andersson and Stephen A. Barney, (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), 266–93. An earlier version of the essay appeared in Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1980), 1–24.
Richard W. Kaeuper, ‘William Marshal, Lancelot, and the Issue of Chivalric Identity’, Essays in Medieval Studies, 22 (2005), 1–19.
Laura Ashe, ‘William Marshal, Lancelot, and Arthur: Chivalry and Kingship’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 30 (2007), 19–40; comments on the Young King at 26–31.
On the development of chivalry as a cultural concept, see especially Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and Constance Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave and Noble: Chivalry and Society in Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). For the military realities, Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Nicole Eustace, et al., ‘AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions’, American Historical Review, 117.5 (2012), 1487–531 (quote at 1497).
Richard E. Barton, ‘Emotions and Power in Orderic Vitalis’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 33 (2010), 41–59.
Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
For a fuller explanation see Lindsay Diggelmann, ‘Hewing the Ancient Elm: Anger, Arboricide, and Medieval Kingship’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 40.2 (2010), 249–72, at 265–7.
Recent works on Stephen include Edmund King, King Stephen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); and Paul Dalton and Graeme J. White, ed., King Stephen’s Reign (1135–1154) (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008).
J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal Society and the Family in Early Medieval England: I. The Revolution of 1066’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 32, 5th Series (1982), 193–212, at 193. More generally, on the possibility of studying emotional connections during the period see John S. Moore, ‘Inside the Anglo-Norman Family: Love, Marriage, and the Family’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 28 (2005), 1–18.
On tournaments see Juliet Barker, The Tournament in England, 1100–1400 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1986); David Crouch, Tournament (London and New York: Hambledon, 2005); and Benson, ‘The Tournament…’, 267, where the author notes that Chrétien and the poet of the History provide ‘our earliest descriptions of fictional tournaments … and our earliest descriptions of real tournaments…’
On national pride as an emotion in the medieval context, see Lindsay Diggelmann, ‘Gardens as “Emotional Communities”: Three Medieval French Examples’, Digital Philology 1.2 (2012), 253–67 (at 255–8).
The object of the siege was the castle of Milly-sur-Thérain (Holden et al., eds., William Marshal, vol. 3, 136, note for line 11124). On this campaign see also David Crouch, ‘William Marshal and the Mercenariat’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. John France (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 15–32, at 16–17. On Franco-Norman border conflict more generally see Daniel Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
On this episode see Crouch, William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 63–5. Also of interest for the relationship between the Marshal and the king is Nicholas Vincent, ‘William Marshal, King Henry II and the Honour of Châteauroux’, Archives, 25 (2000), 1–15.
For the last days of Henry II’s reign see Gillingham, Angevin Empire, 36–40; and W. L. Warren, Henry II (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), 621–6. Warren notes that other accounts of events at Le Mans do not implicate Henry as authorising the fire and suggest that he was dismayed at the destruction. Therefore the History’s version seems to establish a deliberate contrast between the king’s supposed indifference and the Marshal’s empathy, in order to highlight the latter.
Studies of Philip include Jim Bradbury, Philip Augustus: King of France, 1180–1223 (London and New York: Longman, 1998); and John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). On Richard see John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
On the Battle of Bouvines see Georges Duby, The Legend of Bouvines: War, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). The History brushes over what was, from the English perspective, a military disaster fairly briefly at lines 14787–820.
For John’s reign see Gillingham, Angevin Empire, 86–108; Ralph V. Turner, King John (London and New York: Longman, 1994); and Stephen D. Church, ed., King John: New Interpretations (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999). David Crouch comments on the History’s generally antagonistic view of John in ‘Baronial Paranoia in King John’s Reign’, in Magna Carta and the England of King John, ed. Janet S. Loengard (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010), 45–62, at 47–8.
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Diggelmann, L. (2015). Emotional Responses to Medieval Warfare in the History of William Marshal. In: Downes, S., Lynch, A., O’Loughlin, K. (eds) Emotions and War. Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137374073_2
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