Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield (review)

Robert Jones has produced an engagingly readable and clear account of the role of military display on the medieval battlefield. It will be useful for undergraduates and for more specialized audiences from a variety of fields, including literature and art history, not just military history.

The structure is straightforward. The first seven chapters individually explore heraldic display, badges, armour, swords, and audible display – such as war cries and the use of musical instruments – and examine their particular roles. These include very practical requirements such as the need to identify friend from foe, or how useful armour was as protection in relation to its symbolic and psychological roles. The penultimate chapter examines religious symbolism on the battlefield and its broader theological and secular contexts. It briefly touches on the Church’s accommodation of the warrior and his role in society, transforming him into a symbol of spiritual struggle. The final chapter contains a discussion of the debates around the idea of a ‘military revolution’ in warfare, first proposed by Michael Roberts in his 1955 paper ‘The Military Revolution, 1560–1660.’

It is in this final chapter that Jones argues most forcefully for his project. Just as the castle has been reconsidered in terms of its social and domestic roles, as well as its military architecture, this work makes the case for a similar reconsideration for military display. Jones argues cogently for such display as being ‘a fundamental part of military warfare, serving as an outward expression of its motivations and drives’, as an integral part of military culture and its exploration, and an important avenue for historical research. The usefulness of this avenue of research is demonstrated by the manner in which such an examination can bring nuances to the debates about the identification of moments of change in warfare, and the outlining of the distinction between the development of methods of warfare and the broader cultures out of which these changes emerge. Change and continuity coexist in this approach.

One of the real pleasures of this work is the use made by Jones of contemporary textual and visual records. The book opens with the ignominious death of Sir John Chandos in 1396 in battle. After grandly challenging the French army, Chandos dismounted and advanced towards them, skidding and tripping over his elaborate robes, and was then killed by a squire’s lance thrust. Jones uses this account to explore both contemporary prejudices about such seeming vainglory, as well as possible explanations for such elaborate dress. Presumably Chandos, an experienced military commander, had not been regarded as a buffoon before this incident.

Jones’s use of such vivid anecdotes adds substantially to making his book so accessible. They include the discovery of William Marshall, after a tournament, with his head on a smith’s anvil having his helmet cut to pieces because it was too battered to remove and the description of Frankish knights leaving a battle in the First Crusade, looking like porcupines because their armour was covered with arrows. His knowledge of military accoutrements means that he convincingly challenges the oft-repeated interpretation of Bishop Odo’s baculus in the Bayeux Tapestry as reflecting ecclesiastical prohibitions of clerics spilling blood, arguing instead that it was an early equivalent of a field marshal’s baton.

Jones’s discussion of the practicalities of battle seems grounded in common sense. He discusses the role of war cries, drums, and trumpets in the field as means to penetrate the numbing effect of armour-enclosed headgear, and to communicate, galvanize or terrify the enemy, as well as discussing the chilling effect of an enemy’s silence. He talks of the impact of armour on sight, hearing, and mobility.

It is only when he steps out of the medieval arena that Jones is less convincing. I found the parallels he draws with the natural world or his crosscultural comparisons with such groups as the Wola warriors of Papua New...