War, Justice, and Public Order. England and France in the Later Middle Ages (review)

130 Reviews Kaeuper, R.W., War, Justice, and Public Order. England and France in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford, Clarendon, 1988; pp.xii, 451; R.R.P. A U S $135.00. The jacket illustration on the cover of Professor Kaeuper's book presents the Great Seal of Edward III with two images of medievd kingship impressed upon its faces: the king as fount of justice, enthroned and equipped with orb and sceptre; the king as chivalric war-lord, mounted and charging with drawn sword. This fascinating book is a reflection upon these two major activities of the medievd state, as dso upon the tensions and discordances which arose between them in England and France during the period 1290-1360 when the wars between these kingdoms absorbed more and more of their fiscd and administrative resources. It is the author's opinion, elegantly and forcefully presented, that the precocious English state was dramatically unbdanced by the war politics of the first three Edwards, whereas the less developed Capetian/Vdois monarchy managed, in thefiresof war, to forge new bonds between crown and people. A bdd summary of the central thesis does little justice to the range and andyticd depth of this bold enterprise in comparative contitutiond history. Kaeuper ranges back to the foundations of the English and French state-building enterprises and forward (more tentatively) into the 'constitutiondism* and 'absolutism' of a later period. His discussion draws upon such an impressive anay of recent historicd literature that his chapters sometimes read like reviewarticles , magisteridly summarizing the present state of research in a wide variety of medievd secular themes: war-finance, chivalry, public order, public opinion. It is inevitable that an 'extended interpretive essay' (as Kaeuper modestly describes his own work) which 'extends' to 400 pages should struggle for bdance between argumentation and description. In thefirstchapter, the details of Plantagenet war-financingrathercloud the simple point that late-medievd war was becoming more expensive (a preliminary note about medievd coins and money of account, together with a fuller list of abbreviations, might prevent some confusion over the mass of 'd's, '£'s, «m's, *s's, 'fl's, 'l.p's, 'l.t's here, though nothing codd prepare the reader for the '$' on page 52!). At other times,' most obviously in the difficult area of medievd 'public opinion' in the find chapter, the argumentation exuberantly outruns the evidence. Kaeuper's nanow chronologicd base, a mere seventy years, may be seen as a weakness in a study of such conceptud grandeur. If late-medieval warfare is such a central concern, why is most of the Hundred Years War missing? It is only with the benefit of a vast hindsight that we can see the French crown, in 1360, on the road to its future strength. W e must skip lightly over the Free Companies, then the civil wars between Armagnaes and Burgundians, and discount, as an aberration, the fact that Charles VI's successor was not a French Valois but an English Lancastrian. Reviews 131 But this is dl part of the 'discussion' which Kaeuper, in his introduction, hopes to 'provoke' by this bold and imaginative study. Unfortunately, one cannot be very optimistic about the Australian prospects of such a debate when the locd price-tag is $135.00. Nicholas Wright Department of History Umversity of Adeldde Koenigsberger, H.G., Medieval Europe, 400-1500, London, Longman, 1987; pp.xiii, 401; 50 plates, 23 maps; paperback, R.R.P. A U S $31.95. The unquenchable flow of research papers and monographs on so wide a range of medievd topics has made the task of the synthesiser at once more necessary and more daunting. Those of us who from time to time teach a umversity course at First Year level introducing Australian students to an unfamiliar world face a consistent problem: how to induce good practices of historicd enquiry through a diversity of reading while at the same time ensuring that the shape of the woodlands and the forests can be discerned amid dl the trees. Professor Koenigsberger and Lord Briggs have planned a three-volume gdde to the forests of European history from the fdl of R o m e up to 1980...