In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century
  • Paul Solon
War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century. By Adrian R. Bell. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2004. ISBN 1-84383-103-1. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 246. $85.00.

The calamitous reign of Richard II lacks the glory other periods offer for English students of the Hundred Years' War and its scholarship is underdeveloped. Still, armies were mobilized and battles fought. Bell's intriguing study of the Englishmen who made up those armies and fought those battles [End Page 214] is therefore particularly welcome. He begins with a broad narrative but focuses on Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, whose 1387–88 campaigns began with a naval victory off Flanders made profitable by the capture of a wine fleet, but subsequently degenerated into unproductive forays. Arundel was a key figure amongst the so-called "Appellant" Lords who had limited the king's power and his position was maintained at this time only by defeat of crown forces at Radcot Bridge between the two French expeditions, and this domestic clash completes the picture Bell thereafter analyzes in detail.

The crux of the book is not narrative but prosopographical analysis. Surviving musters make it possible to identify and study a limited—only a fraction of the thousands who served—but nonetheless suggestive sample of several hundred men. Muster rolls are cryptic but if these are perhaps treated credulously they are also treated with admirable technical mastery, e.g., the detailed analysis of the texts beginning on page 52, and yield many secrets to Bell. Better yet, he supplements the texts with every conceivable parallel source, including chronicles, Letters of Protection, Appointments of Attorney, Court of Chivalry Proceedings, and Pardon Pleas, producing an exemplary computer based analysis. Cumulatively, these military and political biographies of obscure knights, esquires, and archers reveal much about how fourteenth-century soldiers constructed their careers in time of both international conflict and domestic crisis. Bell certainly establishes statistically that some soldiers had a shared membership in an ongoing "English military community" with 66 percent of retinue captains serving on both expeditions but the rate of approximately 15 percent for lesser figures does raise a question as to his assertion that many men served primarily as "professional soldiers."

More stimulating but also frustrating are individual studies of relationships between men and commanders. Bastard Feudalism may be passé as a term but, however problematic, the concept surely has relevance here. It would moreover be intriguing to see what contemporary French scholarship on clientage systems might add to this analysis, but Bell generally ignores French scholarship, not even indicating a use of the many classic works of Philippe Contamine in his scholarly apparatus. In the final analysis Bell documents the unsurprising observation that men served with neighbors, friends, family, and dependents, but the exact quality and character of relationships remain mysterious and he is left to conclude that "allegiances were fluid during these years and an actual solid partisanship" is hard to pin down. His subjects were undeniably lifetime soldiers but they may well have acted more as loyal clients than as modern professionals. In any case we are indebted to Bell for this renewed demonstration that medieval monarchs were indeed dependent upon mighty and over mighty arms-bearing subjects. We are also reminded of an ongoing debt of gratitude to the Boydell Press for its continued willingness to make such rewarding but demanding scholarship available to the limited audience of specialists for whom this work is indispensable.

Paul Solon
Macalester College
St. Paul, Minnesota
...

pdf

Share