Chivalry: A Distant Mirror of Military Legitimacy6
The noble qualities of knighthood - courage, honor and a readiness to help the weak and protect women - were the substance of chivalry.7 These qualities were personified in King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, whose medieval exploits of good against evil are familiar to every youngster.
Unfortunately, history records that the romantic virtues of King Arthur's knights, or at least their real world counterparts, were more myth than reality:[They] were supposed, in theory, to serve as defenders of the Faith, upholders of justice, champions of the oppressed. In practise, they were themselves the oppressors, and by the fourteenth century the violence and lawlessness of the men of the sword had become a major agency of disorder.8
Chivalry was more than a list of admirable qualities of the medieval warrior. It was a moral system that developed with the great crusades and governed all aspects of life for the Christian nobility of that era. In war, its emphasis was on individual gallantry and honor, making hand-to-hand combat between knights the norm. As a code of conduct, it 'intended to fuse the religious and martial spirits and somehow bring the fighting man into Christian theory'.9
The standards of chivalry were virtuous and demanding. Honore Benet, a Benedictine Prior, wrote of them in his The Tree of Battle, which he dedicated to Charles VI, in 1387.
Through every discussion his governing idea was that war should not harm those who do not make war, while every example of his time showed that it did... With no illusions about chivalry, Benet wrote that some knights were made bold by their desire for glory, others by fear, others by 'greed to gain riches and for no other reason'.10
Medieval Europe was obsessed with religious war. The Popes, kings and their noble knights saw nothing more virtuous than a crusade to expand their power and influence.
Crusades and chivalry dominated fourteenth-century Europe, and coincided with renewed interest in the concept of Just War. For a king to raise and supply an army, the cause had to be just. As with Jewish leaders 1,000 years earlier, Christian kings were convinced that God was on their side when they went to war. But with their rape, pillage and plunder the crusades were no more humane than the holy wars of Old Testament times.In the fourteenth century kings looked to their knights and vassals to raise the men and money required for war. Unless perceived to be a Just War, the means would not be forthcoming. The elements of Just War have changed little since the fourteenth century: the war had to be declared just by competent authority; some injustice on the part of the enemy, like heresy, was needed to ensure a just cause; and right intention was also required. But none of this moralizing negated the
... right of spoil - in practice, pillage - that accompanied a Just War. It rested on the theory that the enemy, being unjust, had no right to property, and that booty was the due reward for risk of life in a just cause.11
The fourteenth century was a violent time of plagues and persecution. Life was cheap and human rights non-existent. Discrimination against the Jews was especially brutal, their being labelled 'Christ killers' and blamed for the Black Death that ravaged the land. Even Thomas Aquinas opined that 'since Jews are slaves of the Church, she can dispose of their possessions'.12 With religion the driving force behind medieval politics and warfare, inquisitions and crusades were the norm. They represented a great irony: intolerance, hate and violence in the name of Jesus who taught love, mercy and peace.
The hypocrisy of chivalry was evident in the frequent raids by knights into adjoining lands for the specific purpose of plunder. A classic example was a raid in 1355 by Prince Edward of England across the Channel into Bordeaux:
Never had the famous, beautiful and rich lands of Armagnac known such destruction as was visited upon it in these two months.
The havoc was not purposeless but intended, like military terrorism in any age, to punish or deter people from siding with the enemy.... Plunder would play its part both as profit and pay. In reporting his raid to the Bishop of Winchester, Prince Edward described it as 'harrying and wasting the country'.13The sanctimonious bubble of chivalry, however, was destined to burst at the battle of Nicopolis in 1396. En route to that fateful battle, French knights reportedly engaged in 'wrongs, robberies, lubricities, and dishonest things', including debaucheries with prostitutes. This indiscipline and misconduct encouraged 'the men in outrages upon the women in countries through which they passed'. Unrestrained pillage and mistreatment of native inhabitants along the way to Nicopolis caused great consternation among clerics who implored the knights to behave, but to no avail. In frustration one monk lamented 'they might as well have talked to a deaf ass'.14
When they arrived at Nicopohs on the Danube River in what is now Bulgaria, French knights initiated the battle with a glorious charge against the Turkish infidels holding the city. Because of poor discipline, non-existent strategy and worse tactics, the crusaders, while initially successful, were routed by the better led and disciplined Turkish forces of Sultan Bajazet and his Bulgarian allies. The bloody defeat ended the Crusades and the era of the gallant knight.15 The battle of Agincourt in 1415 confirmed the end of chivalry as operational art. At Agincourt, as at Nicopolis, 'the battle was lost by the incompetence of French chivalry, and won more by the action of the English common soldiers than of the mounted knights'.16
While chivalry became obsolete as an operational concept, it has survived in military concepts of honor and gallantry which incorporate the moral imperative to protect civilians from the ravages of war. During the War Between the States chivalry flourished among officers of the Confederate army. It was personified in the dignity of General Robert E. Lee and the more colorful exploits of General J. E. B. Stuart. And while chivalry has produced a sometimes distorted sense of honor, its ideals continue to imbue the traditional military values of duty, loyalty, integrity and selfless service.
According to Lewis Lapham, chivalry is alive and well; President Bush relied on it to provide legitimacy to Restore Hope, the 1992 humanitarian intervention in Somalia:
Because the American public likes to believe that its cause is either noble or just, the argument must be phrased in the language of chivalry or Holy Crusade, and when President Bush sent the army to Somalia last December he borrowed the persona of a medieval pope.17