William Marshal

This paper discusses the depiction of ambushes in chronicles of the High Middle Ages. Identifying ambushes in this period is particularly difficult, as the Latin term 'insidia' could also be used more generically to refer to stratagems, snares and cunning ploys. This paper combines evidence from contemporary chronicles, Patristic and medieval theological writing and Anglo-Norman epic verse to examine the variety of situations in which ambushes were used by medieval combatants and the different lessons that historians drew from tales of warriors ambushed (or ambushing) unawares.

This paper analyzes secondary and primary source literature written about William Marshal - a comparatively famous 12th century knight - in order to determine what influences his reputation has had on authors, as well as what consequential perceptions there are of him due to that distortion.

WILLIAM MARSHAL IN BATTLE OF DRINCOURT (1166): THE BEGINNING OF FLOWER'S OF CHIVALRY CAREER
The article, based on an episode (the battle of Drincourt, 1166) from the biography of “the flower of chivalry" by William Marshall (set out in the “History of William Marshall” composed by the Anglo-Norman poet Jean in the first third of the 12th century), deals with the strategies and practices by which the young knight could earn social capital and military competence at the 'proprietorial warfare'. Such kind of warfare completely dominated in the military culture of the Medieval West. This warfare was shaped by four main factors: a. the dominance of land as a form of wealth; b. the limited competence of government; c. the state of technology which, broadly, favoured defence over attack; d. the geography and climate of the West. The battle of Drincourt was a typical one for proprietorial warfare. The reason was the conflict over land ownership. The immediate cause of the conflict in 1166 on the border of the Duchy of Normandy was the deprivation by the English King Henry II of his old enemy William Talvas, count Ponthieu from his inheritance in South Normandy. The territory of the county of Ponthieu was located north of Normandy at the mouth of the river Somme. Talvas, along with his allies, counts of Flanders and Boulogne, invaded the Norman County of Eu. Drincourt, a frontier fortress that covered the Normandy capital Rouen from the north and expectedly was under attack. The seigneurs who defended it acted in very weak interplay with their monarchs. The chief royal military administrator in the region, Constable of Normandy Richard du Hommet, left Drincourt immediately after receiving news of the enemy’s arrival. The battle took place around and inside the fortified settlement, the victory went to the side that was on the defensive. The terrain played a major role in the battle. William Marshall proved himself in it as a model knight, and his first success largely determined his further advancement on the social hierarchy in Western medieval society. Although the poet Jean's message is inscribed in the apologetic knightly biography, the author – or authors, if we agree with David Crouch that the poet put the original Marshall’s storytelling on the poem, it composed without any snobbery focus to proves of noble combatants. Poet described all military techniques of the day: from the iconic knight’s mounted shock combat with couched lance to the use of household tools such as a hook to knock down walls in a fire. The poet colorfully conveyed the chaos and spontaneity of tactical concepts of the proprietorial warfare. Old feudal conflicts divide the leaders, the invaders enter the battle incoordination, giving the defenders time to regroup and even rest – the ambush of Marshall in the sheep detachment repeated twice confirms it. The poetic description of the Battle of Drincourt is also of key event to the understanding of William Marshall’s fighting skills, for which he largely built his political career.

Honour was one of the key social concepts in medieval aristocratic culture but its rules and conventions often go unspoken in contemporary sources. Studying the tournament, a public display of chivalry in which reputations were both won and lost, can help modern scholars to understand what sort of behaviour the nobility considered honourable. This paper takes a 'long' view of the tournament, from the mass tourneys of the twelfth century to the elaborate pas d'arms of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, tracing how understandings of honour and their specific expression in the tournament changed over the period.

In this article, we try to draw a line of argument to explain the birth and development of several closely related phenomena such as tournaments, (with its important sports and social attributes), cavalry, and heraldry. Although the tournament and its variants had a marked character of military training, at the end of the period they became phenomena of social and political importance, although the competitive spirit was never lost. The growing formation of medieval noble retinues and the importance of cavalry led also to the proliferation of personal badges and emblems, which were finally ruled and organized by heraldic science. Both the blazons and individual knight disputes and / or between teams needed experienced judges and referees, so we will also mention the origin of the King of Arms and the heralds, figures in charge of such a task, and will try to illustrate the vision of the Church on such phenomena, as well as its reflection in the literary sources.

This paper challenges the established historiography that the History of William Marshal was simply a narrative of the life and adventures of William Marshal. Whereas modern historians have interpreted the text as a treatise on chivalry, a snapshot of the relationships between lords and kings, as well as an insight into the lordly household, no one has set out to evaluate the History within its own time, the period c.1224-1229. This paper, therefore, argues that the History should be reinterpreted as a text which reflects the period in which it was written. By analysing the place of Hubert de Burgh, Chief Justiciar of England 1215-1232, in the History of William Marshal, we are able to see that the text was much more than a fancy tale of knightly exploits; it was, instead, very much a text interwoven with a political commentary on the events of the 1220s.

Penser les pouvoirs dans l'Angleterre médiévale, Xe-XIIIe siècle » Séminaire master-doctorat 2021-2022 (semestre 1). Mardi 17h-19h, Bibliothèque Boutruche (bâtiment Sorbonne, escalier F, 2 e étage). Autour de la biographie : l'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal.

Despite his otherwise detailed coverage of the martial adventures in the life of William Marshal, earl of Pembroke and Striguil (d.1219), the author of the History of William Marshal (c.1224–6) remained silent about the two years William spent on crusade. Generations of historians have struggled to understand this missing episode and have offered a variety of explanations. This article offers a new solution to this old problem, by placing the History of William Marshal for the first time in the broader landscape of contemporary writing about the crusades and the East. It is argued that the period in which the History was written was one of intense reflection on the crusading past. A survey of contemporary narratives reveals that the biographer had two options, to admit that his crusade had been a failure, or to reground the story within a growing romance tradition. Eschewing both options, he chose silence.