THE KINGDOM OF France was never a coherent territorial entity, what we would call a state, but, rather, a collection of lands, rights, and claims. Additionally, as the word “claims” implies, these were often contested. The ways in which they were advanced, realized, fought over, and lost are related to the nature of French society, however, as are the armies that were a vital element in the monarchy’s development.

Since the collapse of Rome monarchs had been, essentially, the rulers of the rich and powerful who controlled the day to day life of ordinary people. The power of emperors and kings rested on their ability to build up resources, to manipulate the great through patronage, and to overawe or even threaten them with military power. The wealth of the king and his control of government gave him the means to reward. Royal offices were highly prized: to be a count was prestigious and well rewarded, and also enabled its holder to exercise power in his own interests. Kings could give their own land, and sometimes that of the Church, to favoured servants. The king could also, of course, act as a judge in disputes between the great and be the guarantor of the legitimacy of those who held power. This process left powerful lords with virtual autonomy, however, especially in the counties they controlled. Even a monarch as powerful as Charlemagne inveighed angrily against those who misused the royal power to repress lesser men in his Memorandum on Military Matters of 811. These great men drew their wealth from landed estates on which they subjugated the peasantry to the status of serfs, a process very apparent in Carolingian times and even earlier. Kings were expected to lead in war, though a wise ruler would consult so as to ensure that the great men would follow him. Successful war gained loot and gave the king’s aristocratic followers employment for their armed retinues. Monarchy had great patronage, which could be used to manipulate others. Personality mattered a great deal, though, for power was exercised in a relatively small circle of individuals and radiated out from the royal court through the spheres of influence (mouvances) of each.

I OWE THANKS to many people for the help they have given me in preparing this book. The meetings of De Re Militari, the Society for Medieval Military History, have provided enormous stimulus over many years. More particularly, I would like to thank Clifford Rogers and Kelly DeVries, my colleagues on the editorial board of the Journal of Medieval Military History, for their kindness, patience, and great learning. Professors Bernard and David Bachrach have been a rich source of ideas. My colleagues in the History Department of Swansea University, Professor Dan Power and Dr. Simon Johns, have been enormously helpful. I can only admire the scholarly learning of Professor Matthew Strickland, to whose work I owe a very great deal. Dr. Alan V. Murray has been most generous in sharing knowledge and ideas. I owe a great deal to Dominique Barthélemy, whose knowledge of medieval France is remarkable. Federico Canaccini very kindly granted me the benefit of his learning, while Peter Herde made me think again about the Battle of Tagliacozzo.

Much of this book has been written during the extraordinary restrictions imposed by Covid-19. In spite of this, my family, and especially Angela, my wife, have coped with my struggles against these circumstances. Last, but not least, I must thank Anna Henderson of Arc Humanities Press, for all her help and the occasional – albeit tactful – prods, which have kept me going.

BY THE THIRTEENTH century the French army stood out as the supreme force in western Europe. The best indication of this is that, after 1214, most of its campaigns took place outside the borders of France. The wars of Louis VIII in the 1220s established royal domination in Provence and Languedoc, areas where it had been weak. Henry III Plantagenet’s attempts to recover his family lands were poorly managed and never in any real sense threatened the Capetian realm. The wars in Guyenne and Flanders at the end of our period were, essentially, the result of French aggression and overconfidence. Edward I had shown no signs of aggression and Philip IV simply seems to have tried to take advantage of his preoccupations within Britain to eliminate his territorial position in France, probably because for a king to do homage to another was always a difficult situation. Elsewhere French armies had conquered south Italy, were active in Frankish Greece, and dominated in the crusader states and Cyprus. This remarkable efflorescence of French power had many complex causes, but it clearly attests to the remarkable success of the French way of war. How and why had that come about?

The French royal army was, in principle, no different from that of any other power of northwest Europe. Medieval armies were very close reflections of the societies that produced them. A relatively poor society dominated by a narrow elite produced a precisely parallel kind of army— in the words of Contamine, an “occasional agglomeration of small autonomous forces.” By the end of the thirteenth century the monarchy had spelled out the military obligation of the population and could raise a much more cohesive force. The outcome of Courtrai was a defeat, but despite that the planning and control exerted by an able commander is very evident. This had come about, however, solely because military service to the monarch had become accepted.

The great nobles remained vital in mobilizing troops from among the petty nobility of their families and their dominions, though increasingly they had to accept the authority of the royal officers who supervised them. The mass of foot was recruited from the cities and the urban militia, augmented by mercenaries when necessary. In addition, a general belief that in time of necessity all freemen had an obligation to serve the king was emerging. The tightening of military obligation so evident in France in the late thirteenth century had English parallels, but no other western kingdom had managed to enforce such provisions so firmly and so widely. The political evolution of the French kingdom made this possible.

LOUIS VII’S SON, Philip, who assumed power when his father became ill and was then crowned in 1179 at the age of fourteen, was a very different personality. He also inherited a radically different situation. Louis VII had blocked the expansion of the Plantagenet empire and had shown that he could interfere in all parts of that great collection of lands. Even in the far south he was a factor in maintaining the independence of Toulouse. He had checked the ambitions of Frederick Barbarossa in the east and shown himself as the protector of noble powers there. Although he had not struck any fatal blow at Henry II, he had greatly curbed his ambitions. In addition, he had done all this with an ostentatious respect for noble privilege. This was a huge step forward from the situation he had inherited, and, while he had achieved no great accretion of royal demesne, his political activities were clearly backed by considerable wealth, derived from the economic expansion of the west.

The Early Reign

Because he was only fourteen, Philip was at first subject to the regency of Philip of Flanders, who had been a close ally of his father. The count strengthened his own position at the French court by arranging for Philip to marry Elizabeth of Hainaut, daughter of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut. As dowry of his wife, the young Philip was given considerable lands around Artois, though Count Philip was to retain control of them for his lifetime, and if there was no heir of the marriage they would revert to Elizabeth’s father, Baldwin count of Hainaut. King Philip soon resented the ascendancy at his court of the Flemish count. Tension grew, and in 1181 Count Philip demanded the return of the castle of Breteuil from Raoul of Clermont, who appealed to King Philip and hostilities began. Count Philip, supported by Baldwin of Hainaut, burned Noyon and ravaged entire countrysides, until he confronted the royal army at Crépy, but there was no battle and truces were made at the approach of Christmas. It is a mark of the prestige of the French monarchy that Henry the younger, heir of Henry II, in person and with a strong following of knights, supported the French king.

BOUVINES ESTABLISHED PHILIP as a major power in Europe, on a par with the emperor, and conferred great prestige upon his fighting forces. There were limits to its benefits within France, however. The rights of the great nobles continued to be respected, even those of Ferrand’s wife in Flanders, though Prince Louis exploited the county harshly. When Prince Louis, by then Louis VIII (1223– 1226), died unexpectedly in 1226 he left a child, and some of the nobles tried to exploit this situation, in what Dominique Barthélemy has called the “fronde des barons.” In fact, Barthélemy argues that the French king’s powers over the high nobility remained somewhat precarious until the time of St. Louis, but it is difficult to see how his reform of government would ever have been possible without Bouvines.

The Invasion of England

The truce at Chinon did not end the war with John, however, for victory created an appetite for more glory. In England many of the barons rebelled, driven by the financial exactions and the personal vindictiveness of John. In May they persuaded London to join them, forcing John to agree to the Magna Carta on June 15, 1215. By August 15, however, he was absolved from the obligations it placed on him by Innocent III, who was anxious to support, as he saw it, a vassal against rebels and a sworn crusader against those whose actions delayed his departure. England now fell into civil war, and many of the rebels appealed to Philip’ son, Prince Louis, to be their king. Philip and Louis delayed, however, while the rebels in London were inactive. John organized an efficient, largely mercenary army, which attacked Rochester on October 13. This was a very strong castle, whose great donjon still stands, but John pressed the siege. He mined one of the corner towers of the donjon, commanding his justiciar: “We order you to send to us night and day with all haste 40 bacon pigs of the fattest and those less good for eating to use for bringing fire under the tower.” To this day the result is visible, for, after the tower collapsed, it was rebuilt as a round tower, quite distinct from those on the other three sides.

Purpose and Range of This Book

FRENCH HISTORY IN the period under consideration can often appear totally shapeless, seeming to be “just one damned thing after another.” This is particularly true of its military history, in which major events and dramatic changes are rare. Additionally, of course, those who composed our sources had their own agendas, and what they tell us reflects their priorities. To understand the coherence of French military history we must always remember that war reflects the nature of the societies that wage it. At heart, this was an agrarian society that marched to the rhythm of the agriculture year. The elite seized most of the difference between what peasants produced and what they needed to live on. Hence there could be no standing army of any size, and this relative poverty meant that any large army that was gathered could not stay together for very long.

Essentially, the subject of our discussion is the inheritance of Charles the Bald (843– 877), the lands of the West Franks. His death was followed by a sequence of very short-lived descendants, and then a protracted period in which the territory was torn between the rival royal houses of the Carolingians and the Capetians. Yet, by the later thirteenth century, France was the dominant kingdom in Europe, and a branch of its Capetian ruling house governed the wealthy kingdom of Sicily. Its influence extended right across the Mediterranean to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was protected by a French contribution to the garrison. A series of French popes ruled the Church, notably Martin IV (1281– 1285). By the end of the century royal power had totally eclipsed that of the great nobility and a process of royal centralization through a loyal bureaucracy was well under way.

This was an extraordinary rise, all the more so in that the inheritance of Charles the Bald was bitterly contested internally and, for a time, subject to violent external attack. Yet this entity held together, although Lorraine drifted to the empire and outposts in the Pyrenees to Spanish Christian kingdoms. These were only marginal losses, however, despite the fact that there was no obvious principle of unity.

The “Frankish” Roots of Kingship

THERE WAS NO single moment when “France” was invented. The name slowly came to be applied to the area ruled by the Capetian monarchs, the descendants of Odo of Paris. Before the late thirteenth century, though, it was never a coherent territorial entity but, rather, a collection of lands, rights, and claims presided over by them. It is interesting, however, that the Anglo Saxon Chronicle refers to the people who conquered England in 1066 as “French”. Suger, abbot of St. Denis, wrote a life of Louis VI (1108– 1137) in which he usually describes what we now call the Île de France— broadly, the area of Capetian domination between Seine and Loire— as Francia. Since he was close to the monarchy and a great supporter of Louis VI, it seems that he regarded this area as truly France. On the other hand, he sometimes speaks of broader territories as being Francia, notably referring to the events of 1124, when Louis VI led a resistance from all over Gaul to repel a German invasion. This seems to speak of both an actuality— the confinement of the monarchy to the Île de France— and a pretention, to a much wider dominion. The idea of France was emerging but it was very diffuse. We can certainly see Flanders as part of the French world, even though its counts were subjects of the German empire for some of their lands, while the Normans were effectively assimilated to French culture, as were the Bretons. After 1066 England became a French colony. So, in the search for the French army, the net can be cast widely.

When can we speak of a French monarchy, a French kingdom, a French people, or France? Essentially, France emerged out of a quite different identity, and even by the end of our period it barely resembled a nation in our sense of the word, in which people of a common language and culture live within defined frontiers under a single sovereign power. Yet a monarchy, around which modern France crystallized, did exist as a separate entity after 843: the portion of the Frankish Empire acquired by Charles the Bald.

The Early Reign

THE EARLY DEATH of Louis VIII in 1226 led to a regency by his very able wife, Blanche of Castile, for his young son, Louis IX (1226– 1270). The absence of an adult male successor inevitably opened the way to aristocratic factional struggle for influence over the young king— what Barthélemy has called the “fronde des barons.” Peter Mauclerc, duke of Brittany, and Philip Hurepel of Boulogne were both of Capetian stock; they and Theobald IV of Champagne were the primary forces in this internal conflict. Mauclerc was a special threat because his duchy had once been held of the Plantagenets, and Henry III was anxious to profit from internal struggles in France. All the competitors had different objectives, however. In 1226 Mauclerc rebelled, but submitted when the queen bought him off and raised a strong army, which she deployed into the Touraine to curb Hugh of Lusignan’s contacts with Henry III. Henry strove to raise an army, but his agents made a truce to last into 1228. In 1228, in alliance with Hurepel, Mauclerc kidnapped the child Louis IX. The militias of the towns of the Île de France rescued Louis. Louis cherished this memory, as John of Joinville, writing in the early fourteenth century, recalled of his journey back to Paris: “The roads had been thronged with people, armed and unarmed, all calling on our Lord to grant their young king a long and happy life and guard him from his enemies.” Mauclerc was again in rebellion in 1230, however, supported by discontented barons of Poitou and a major army led by Henry III. Henry had gathered an army in 1229, but there were insufficient ships to transport them across, and he and Mauclerc agreed to put the expedition off.

In 1230 Henry again raised an English army and landed at St. Malo. His force was perhaps smaller than intended because, before leaving, he sent 160 ships home. He set out for Nantes, where his army delayed. He probably knew that the French were in great difficulty. Theobald of Champagne was a major force whose influence on the regency, and boundary disputes with others, had inflamed tensions, especially with Hurepel, the count of Flanders, and the duke of Burgundy.

ONE OF THE legacies of the classical world was the desire to record events, and this was particularly transmitted to the medieval west through the work of Eusebius. This urge was often expressed by entering brief records in Easter tables, which were used by churches to calculate the date of Easter. These grew into year by year records or annals, often memorializing events of local importance to a particular church or monastery. The seventh century Chronicle of Fredegar was a notable effort at a universal history based on ancient sources, but it is of chief value for its history of the Franks. The Royal Frankish Annals cover the period from 741 to 829, and, while they are certainly the work of many hands, they were composed at the courts of Charlemagne and his successor, Louis the Pious, and have a notably official character centred on the doings of these emperors. After a gap these were resumed at Rheims in the Annals of St Bertin, which cover the period from 830 to 882.

This tradition was revived by Flodoard, a priest of Rheims, and carried through to 966, when he died. He had a real interest in the politics and warfare of his age and provides quite lively descriptions, though he is often very brief. Flodoard’s account was continued by Richer, another priest of Rheims, whose work spans the period from 888 to 995. Richer made extensive use of Flodoard, but from 966 his work is wholly original. He was a rather more discursive writer than Flodoard, and particularly important to this book because his father had been a soldier of Louis IV (936– 954). Richer was fond of parading his classical knowledge, however, and he can be very misleading. Between them, these two works provide a kind of backbone for the earlier part of this book. Among the other sources, Abbon’s account of the siege of Paris is extremely important, while that of Regino of Prüm is essential for our knowledge of Lorraine and the borderlands between what became France and Germany down to 915. Some royal and other records have survived, such as those collected by Lauer, but they are few and provide limited information on military matters.

The French Monarchy and the Anglo Norman State

BY THE LATER eleventh century the great principalities of France had largely become fixed items in the political landscape, and in theory they accepted that they were subject to the Capetian king. In practice the princes rarely attended the royal court, and the king’s relations with them were comparable (but not identical) to those with foreign powers, in that occasions of compelling mutual (and often opposed) interest would bring them together. As we have seen, the monarchy’s real focus had shrunk to between the Seine and Loire, and even there the rise of castellans meant that the king had to persuade rather than command. This condition affected all the principalities, however, and the king struggled to control those who owed him obedience. The more distant of the principalities ignored the monarchy almost totally. The dukes of Brittany were deeply concerned by aggression from Normandy and Anjou but had little to do with the monarchy. The counts of Toulouse and Gothia, especially under Raymond IV of St. Gilles, who absorbed the county of Provence and Arles, virtually ignored the Capetians. Burgundy, though ruled by a cadet branch of the Capetian house, was very aloof. By contrast, Blois Chartres to the west of the royal demesne, and Champagne to the east, both held by descendants of Herbert II of Vermandois, were intimately caught up with the monarchy. Flanders was a mighty power in the north, which marched with the Capetian sphere of influence. Ever menacing was the Anglo Norman realm to the west, so close to Paris.

None of these magnates, not even the Anglo Norman king, ever denied the position of the king of France, however, let alone threatened to overthrow the monarchy or any particular king. The problem was the ambiguities of political organization. The authority of kings was not so very different from that of princes— and, indeed, of lesser lords— for all could act as judges, raise armies, often mint coins, and make alliances with others. How this worked out in any particular case depended almost entirely on the particular political situation. The complexity of relationships was remarkable.

THE CRISIS OF the west Carolingian line in the 880s and Charles the Fat’s concerns with Germany and Italy provoked a military crisis in France, which was attacked by the Vikings. In Scandinavia the eighth century appears to have seen the rise of a dominant warrior elite at the very same time that the conquest of Frisia and Saxony brought Frankish power very sharply to their attention. The excellent ships that these coastal peoples had developed already traded with Europe, and casual raiding was always an option for a crew of thirty or so strong, fit, and armed young men. Success bred larger groups, and often substantial destruction for ordinary people on the coasts and rivers of Europe, and especially France. Very quickly, though, the Viking elite engaged with the politics of the Frankish world, often as allies of the contending Carolingian factions that fought each other after the 830s. The pain their raids inflicted upon ordinary people was, for the Frankish elite, usually a consideration secondary to the politics of the great, in which Viking leaders were so often involved. Hence, we are told that, when in 859 the Vikings were attacking northern France and Flanders,

In 867 a Viking army landed in the mouth of the Loire, perhaps seeking to exploit the tensions between the Bretons, whose land had never been fully subject to Frankish rule, and Robert the Strong, who held the March of Angers against them. Robert trapped the invaders in the church at Brissarthe and settled down to besiege them, but his men were not vigilant— a frequent weakness of medieval armies— and the Vikings burst out, killing Robert. Charles the Bald established frontier zones, Marches, like that of Robert the Strong, against all his enemies, and, as we have noted began the construction of fortified bridges to check shipborne penetration, but with only limited success.

THE DOMINATING POSITION that Charles of Anjou had obtained in the Mediterranean world by 1280, and his close alliance with the papacy, seemed to represent a French ascendancy, for he was always deferential to Louis IX, and after his death continued to be close to his nephew, Philip III (1270– 1285), who he once suggested as a candidate for emperor. He also had many enemies, however. The Byzantines feared him because of his commitment to a reconquest of Constantinople. The Ghibellines in the cities of Italy were profoundly hostile and resisted his attempt to interfere in the area. King Peter III of Aragon (1276– 1285) had married Manfred’s daughter, thereby inheriting the claims of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. In addition, Charles’ raids and threats had established an ascendancy over the emir of Tunis, and this meant that Catalan merchants found it difficult to pass the waist of the Mediterranean, the narrow strait between Sicily and Tunisia. There is no doubt that these powers were all in contact with one another, but whether there was “the great conspiracy” suggested by Steven Runciman is somewhat doubtful, for all of them were totally surprised by the quite unexpected event that brought Charles down.

The War of the Vespers

On the evening of Easter Monday, March 29, 1282, a revolt against Charles’ rule broke out in Sicily. It is said that in Palermo as crowds left Vespers, the evening service, a French sergeant, Drouet, forced himself upon a Sicilian lady, provoking a riot that turned into an uprising against the French. This was only the occasion of the revolt, for there were underlying causes. Not only had Charles levied heavy taxes but he was also an absentee, rarely visiting Sicily. This meant that the local nobles had little access to his person, while his representatives on the island, although few, were hardly emollient, being largely French administrators and soldiers in castle and city garrisons. They were rather few because Charles had kept the island largely as a royal demesne, endowing there very few of his French followers. So, when the rebellion spread, the rebels were able to triumph very quickly. Once they had driven out the creatures of the Angevin king, though, they knew they faced terrible retribution.

Preliminary Remarks

THE SUCCESS OF the armies of the kingdom of France did not rest on any notable advantage in arms, armour, or military equipment. There were differences between countries and districts, but technical development was very slow, and so these provided no special advantages. Moreover, there was only limited variation in the general nature of tactics. In these matters France closely resembled the other countries of western Europe. Armies were made up of cavalry and infantry, usually rendered in Latin chronicles milites et pedites. Milites simply means “soldiers,” but by the later tenth century it usually meant the paid bully boys of the great, the knights, who were the common and notable military men, quickly raised and at the disposal of their masters. Sometimes equites, “horsemen,” was used as a synonym for milites, emphasizing their preference for fighting on horseback, though it should be said that they were perfectly capable of fighting on foot. By that time they had become the embodiment of military power, distinguished by their expensive equipment, by being mounted on horses, which were very expensive animals, and by relatively intensive training. In any large expedition the infantry would be far more numerous, but far less well equipped.

To a modern eye, accustomed to seeing soldiers in uniform, a medieval French army would have been an untidy sight. Pictures in manuscripts tend to impose a degree of uniformity that simply did not exist. We have to remember that soldiers were supposed to bring their own weapons and armour to war. These were largely made of iron, which was difficult to extract and shape and, hence, very expensive. Weapons and armour would have been produced locally, for, although there were areas where iron was worked in quantity, for the most part supply was local. So self provision produced enormous variations both in appearance and quality. And most of the individual soldiers would have used hand me downs in one form or another. The two components of any army were the cavalry and the infantry, milites et pedites. Custom and law demanded that those who had to act as cavalry turned up with at least one good horse and a good set of armour and weapons, but only the great lords had the finest horses and the best and newest weapons and armour.