This Variorum collection of articles is intended to illustrate that conflict in the late Middle Ages was not only about soldiers and fighting (about the makers and the making of war), important as these were. Just as it remains in our own day, war was a subject which attracted writers (commentators, moralists and social critics among them), some of whom glorified war, while others did not. For the historian the written word is important evidence of how war, and those taking part in it, might be regarded by the wider society. One question was supremely important: what was the standing among their contemporaries of those who fought society’s wars? How was war seen on the moral scale of the time? The last two sections deal with a particular war, the ‘occupation’ of northern France by the English between 1420 and 1450. The men who conquered the duchy, and then served to keep it under English control for those years, had to be rewarded with lands, titles, administrative and military responsibilities, even (for the clergy) ecclesiastical benefices. For these, war spelt ‘opportunity’, whose advantages they would be reluctant to surrender. The final irony lies in the fact that Frenchmen, returning to claim their ancestral rights once the English had been driven out, frequently found it difficult to unravel both the legal and the practical consequences of a war which had caused a considerable upheaval in Norman society over a period of a single generation. (CS 1106).
Part I
Chapter 1: A Roman text on War. The Strategemata of Frontinus in the Middle Ages.
Originally published as 'A Roman Text on War. The Strategemata of Frontinus in the Middle Ages', Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen, Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, ed. P. Coss and C. Tyerman (Boydell Press, 2009), 153-68.
Chapter 2: The De Re Militari of Vegetius: How did the Middle Ages treat a Late Roman Text on War?
Originally published as 'The De Re Militari of Vegetius. How did the Middle Ages treat a late Roman text on war?' Revista de Historia des Ideias, vol. 30 (University of Coimbra Press, 2009), 101-17.
Chapter 3: The Fifteenth – Century English Prose Version of Vegetius’ De Re Militari.
Originally published as 'Fifteenth-Century Versions of Vegetius' De Re Militari, Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval France and Britain, Harlaxton Mediaeval Studies, Volume VII, ed. M. Strickland (Shaun Tyas publishing, 1998), 30-45.
Chapter 4: Did the De Re Militari of Vegetius influence the Military Ordinances of Charles the Bold?
Originally published in Publication du Centre Européen d’Etudes Bourguignonnes (XIVe-XVIe s.), xli (2001), 135-43.
Part II
Chapter 5: Changing Perceptions of the Soldier in Late Medieval France.
Taken from ‘Guerre et Société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne XIVe-XVe siecle’, éd. P.Contamine, C. Giry-Deloison and M. Keen, published by Le Centre d'Histoire de la Région du Nord et de l'Europe du Nord-Ouest (1991), 171-88.
Chapter 6: Some Intellectual Influences on the Origins of the Royal Army in Medieval France.
Originally published as 'Des origines intellectuelles de l'armée française au Moyen Âge', in Un Moyen Âge pour aujourd'hui. Mélanges offerts à Claude Gauvard, ed. J. Claustre, O.Mattéoni et N. Offenstadt (Paris, PUF, 2010), 47-56.
Chapter 7: ‘Personal Honour or Common Good? The Witness of Le Jouvencel in the Fifteenth Century.’
Originally published as 'Entre honneur et bien commun: le témoignage du Jouvencel au XVe siecle', Revue Historique, 301/3 (Paris, PUF,1992), 463-81.
Chapter 8: The Problem of Desertion in France, England and Burgundy in the Late Middle Ages.
Originally published as 'Le problème de la désertion en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne à la fin du Moyen Âge’, Guerre, pouvoir et noblesse au Moyen Age. Mélanges en l'honneur de Philippe Contamin. Ed. J. Paviot and J. Verger (Paris, Presses de l' Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2000), 31-41.
Part III
Chapter 9: Normandy in English Opinion at the End of the Hundred Years War.
Originally published as ‘La Normandie devant l’opinion anglaise à la fin de la guerre de Cent Ans’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, vol. 128 (1970), 345-68.
Chapter 10: Diplomacy: The Anglo- French Negotiations, 1439.
Originally published as 'The Anglo-French Negotiations, 1439', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 40 (1967), 1-33.
Chapter 11: Local Reaction to the French Reconquest of Normandy (1449-50): The Example of Rouen.
Originally published as 'Local Reaction to the French Reconquest of Normandy: The Case of Rouen', The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J. R. L. Highfield & R. Jeffs, (Alan Sutton Publishing, 1981), 146-61.
Chapter 12: National Reconcilliation in France at the End of the Hundred Years War.
Originally published as 'National Reconciliation in France at the End of the Hundred Years War', vol.vi, Journal of Medieval Military History, ed. C.J.Rogers, (Boydell Press, 2008), 149-64.
Part IV
Chapter 13: Spies and Spying in the Fourteenth Century.
Originally published as ‘Spies and Spying in the Fourteenth Century’, War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, written by J.R. Alban and C.T. Allmand
(Liverpool: University Press, 1976), 73 – 101.
Chapter 14: War and the Non-Combatant during the Hundred Years War.
Originally published as 'War and the Non-combatant', The Hundred Years War, ed. K.A. Fowler, (London, Macmillan: St Martin's Press, 1971}.
Biography
Christopher Allmand is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History, University of Liverpool, UK. His previous publications include Henry V (1968), Lancastrian Normandy 1415-1450, The History of a Medieval Occupation (1983), The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c.1300-c.1450 (2001), War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France (2000), and The De Re Militari of Vegetius: The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages (2011).
