Jonathan Sumption: The Hundred Years War III - Divided Houses (2009)

The third volume of Sumption's brilliant history of the Hundred Years War has finally appeared, almost twenty years after the first. It covers thirty years, 1369-1399, a period which saw a weariness from the war arising in both France and England, and neither side being wholly successful in their endeavours (France doing rather better in this respect, undoing many of the concessions which were made to Edward III following victories in the earlier part of the century). The low key nature of the fighting is one of the reasons for this impression of weariness; the French leaders had decided that the lesson to be had from battles like Crecy and Poitiers was that defeats could best be avoided by refusing to fight large scale engagements.

It was also a period when experienced kings of England and France were replaced by teenagers (Charles VI and Richard II) or became incapable of governing (Edward III and Charles VI), leading up to Henry Bolingbroke's deposition of Richard II at the end of the book. The only really dynamic aspect is that the war spread to other nations, involving Scotland, Portugal, Flanders, Castile and the Papacy, during this period.

The great virtues of Divided Houses are of course shared with the first two volumes. The detailed knowledge of sources both well known and obscure continues, with the best known for this time being Froissart's entertaining chronicles, which were also a source used by Shakespeare for his history plays. This is combined with accessible writing which is not noticeably partisan, unlike most of the more populist histories of the period I have seen, in English or French - the school books which dealt with the Middle Ages in the school I went to described the whole war in terms of the fortunes of the English, for example. The second volume, Trial By Fire, did get a bit bogged down in the tedious details of the small scale but viciously destructive fighting of the "routiers", mercenary captains who doubled as bandits: the activities of almost any single one are representative of the group as a whole. Here, the nature of the war in these decades means that the focus is more on the courtly politics in Paris and London (with side glances to the important centres of the other states involved), and this makes it more interesting to read.

The Hundred Years War was a pivotal period in the history of Western Europe, being highly influential in the development of the early modern states of England and France in particular. In this thirty year period, the change which is most noticeable is the way that the military fitted into the rest of society, a change important enough to receive a special overview chapter interrupting the main narrative thread. On the one hand there were technological changes following the introduction of gunpowder to warfare which would lead to the evolution of new strategy and tactics (eventually making both the castle and armoured knight obsolete in their fourteenth century form and function). The other development was the rise of the man at arms, who became a part of a class of professional soldiers as opposed to the former knights fighting from feudal obligation and often had quite humble origins (to the extent that it was not infrequent for nobles to refuse to be commanded by even the most famous, men like Chandos and Knollys).

Apart from the broad sweep of the development of medieval warfare, the main theme I saw in Divided Houses was just how difficult war was for medieval states, even though it was an exceptionally aggressive militaristic society, where warfare was glorified as the main occupation of most gently born men. Problems with finance, communications, logistics, and (often) poor generalship all made military success that much harder to achieve. When individuals trained in fighting from almost as soon as they could walk perform so badly, it is fairly clear that something is wrong with the training; my guess is that the emphasis was more on individual prowess in skills such as horse riding and hand to hand combat and honourable conduct than on more menial aspects of warfare such as strategy and logistics (itself admittedly made really difficult by the lack of transport infrastructure). And yet, if you can't get close enough to the enemy to engage them, the personal skills are pretty much useless.


Divided Houses details such débâcles as assembling an army to cross the Channel, only to fail to bring together enough ships to transport them before the period the soldiers were contracted for ran out. Armies were dispatched to meet an enemy force which was somewhere else - often a problem caused by the weeks it could take for accurate news of the current situation to travel between France and England. Campaign lengths were drastically underestimated, with the result that many soldiers had no pay after the first installment; a recipe for rebellion and pillage of local communities (sometimes even supposedly friendly ones). It was hardly surprising that it became harder and harder for the English kings in particular to persuade Parliament to grant the special taxes needed to fund a campaign. (It was easier in France, because most of the fighting happened there, which was a huge persuasive force in itself.) Of course, military incompetence is not restricted to any one period, and some wars (the First World War, or the Crimean War, for example) are notorious for it. So maybe the nobles of the fourteenth century were not surprisingly bad at warfare...

Another excellent volume in what must be among the largest medieval history projects ever undertaken. Another two or three volumes to go - but hopefully not another twenty years! My rating: 9/10.


Edition: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
Review number: 1437

Jonathan Sumption: The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (1990)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 1990 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 820

In England, the Hundred Years' War is chiefly remembered for the victories of Crecy and particularly Agincourt. There was a great deal more to the war - or, more properly speaking, series of wars - and it had important consequences for the development of both the French and English states, and on the conception of these states by their inhabitants (as immortalised by Shakespeare, Agincourt was still used in Second World War propaganda).

Sumption's history of the war, of which this is the first volume, is an old fashined narrative history, if more concerned with matters like finance than earlier or more sketchy descriptions. It assumes a fair amount of knowledge of the generality of medieval history, and concentrates instead on a detailed study of the causes of the war and its earliest phase (this volume, about six hundred pages, only covers the admittedly complex events of the period 1328-1347, along with the background which sets the scene).

The major thing which comes across from this particular book is just how difficult medieval administration was. Lack of information meant that governments had little idea what could be afforded by their countries; poor communications made it difficult to gather troops; tax systems in their infancy made it difficult to collect money, especially when military defeat provoked opposition; and France in particular was an extremely complex collection of smaller communities, each with different traditions, laws and privileges (far greater unity was one of the eventual effects of the war), making it impossibly to impose any taxes or conscript armies with any degree of uniformity across the nation.

These difficulties explain why gains and losses in this stage of the war tended to be impermanent; each side could take territory when they could spend money in one place, but this would quickly be lost when the money ran out. Magnates changed sides when their expenses went unpaid, and soldiers and sailors frequently refused to fight unless their own homes were in danger.

This is an excellent history, with the same feeling for the Middle Ages shown by Sumption's portrait of the church, Pilgrimage. A must for anyone interested in the period.

Niall Ferguson: The Pity of War (1998)

Edition: Allen Lane, 1998
Review number: 699

Niall Ferguson takes a fresh look at the First World War, looking mainly to see whether there is evidence to support the various historical traditions which have grown up around certain aspects of the war, principally its cause and outcome. It is not a book aimed at someone who knows nothing about the history of the period; a fair amount is assumed and much of Ferguson's argument is quite technical.

The issues that Ferguson wishes to raise are distilled by him into ten questions, printed both in the Introduction and in the Conclusion, where they are answered in summary. The first three deal with the War's causes, looking at the traditional view that German militarism made it inevitable. Then the next two are about what in the Second War would be called the Home Front (though in all the main combatants not just Britain), examining the tradition that the non-fighter viewed the war with an enthusiasm fired by the propagandist media. The next four are about the end of the war - why it didn't come sooner through the Allies' superior economic might, or through the German superior military might, and why the appalling conditions on the Western Front in particular did not bring an end through mutiny, and what eventually brought the War to an end. The final question is who was the real victor in economic terms, if any country could really have been said to have won.

Ferguson takes issue with the traditional answers to all these questions, as might be expected. Much of his argument is based around analyses of figures - for example, the amount spent on defence by the various combatants - which makes some parts of the book quite complex. He hardly touches on the tactics and strategy which fill most books about the War. As far as I can tell, his arguments seem convincing and fair, though they are hardly likely to topple the traditionally held, popular views. One or two individuals come in for a great deal of criticism, notably Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary in the years immediately before the War, and economist Maynard Keynes, and I suspect that more patriotically British readers than myself would consider Ferguson to be rather pro-German.

However, I don't feel this myself, and it doesn't seem at all unlikely to me that English language histories might have tended to put more blame on Germany and whitewashed Britain. Ferguson's approach can be criticised; it occasionally seems rather callous to those who lost their lives in the conflict - though this is defensible in terms of what he aims to do, which means he needs to look at casualties as figures rather than as individual tragedies. His use of counterfactuals (alternative historical scenarios) is interesting but a dangerously seductive technique. It is not overused here, and is always clearly signposted as speculative. The Pity of War is generally a book which will fascinate anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the First World War.

Jonathan Sumption: Pilgrimage (1975)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 1975
Review number: 636

A fascinating study of the defining feature of the Middle Ages, its devout Catholicism, Pilgrimage views its subject through the aspect of it which provides the book's title. There are deliberate limitations to keep the book within manageable bounds - concentration on the period between 1100 and 1500, an emphasis on France and England rather than Germany, and interest in popular religious belief rather than the abstract theological arguments of scholars. Some important parts of medieval religion are sketchily covered as a result, though these are subjects easily accessible in more general histories of the period: the development of monasticism; the relationship between the papacy and Holy Roman Emperor (and, more generally, between religious and secular authority); the crusades (except in relation to religious enthusiasm and the invention of indulgences, both topics of great relevance to the history of pilgrimage in the later Middle Ages).

The importance of pilgrimage is really that it is probably the principal distinguishing feature of (popular) Western Christianity in this period. Its development and debasement - from a penance for serious sin to tourism and an indulgence to be gained by visiting particular shrines to obtain early release from Purgatory to an indulgence gained by cash payment - show much of the character of medieval belief as it developed and fed into the reaction against its excesses of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. (The Reformation is not an important a theme in the book as it perhaps could be, and relating what Sumption says to the ideas of Luther, Calvin and other reformers is an interesting exercise for a reader with some knowledge of developments in the sixteenth century.)

Pilgrimage is also one of the areas in which it is possible to gain an insight into normally unrecorded, popular ideas about Christianity as opposed to those of the theological schools. It is of course a relative extreme of enthusiasm - a lot of the evidence for the beliefs of the common people is gained through official condemnation of its excesses - and the picture it points to is not particularly surprising - a greatly simplified and superstitious version of the intellectual subtleties of the church's official views - but it is of great interest none the less.

Lisa Jardine: Worldly Goods (1996)

Edition: MacMillan, 1996
Review number: 625

An interesting idea, Worldly Goods looks at the Renaissance through its attitude to possessions. Two particular objects stand out in Jardine's analysis, the collection of carved gems belonging to a Gonzaga Cardinal, which eventually became stuck in the vaults of the Medici bank, as part of a complex system of pledges on loans; and Holbein's painting The Ambassadors, discussed at some length in the epilogue and clearly bringing together many threads from a wide ranging history.

There is an immense amount of ground to be covered, as Jardine looks at goods not just as works of art but trade items (so that topics such as exploration become relevant), intangibles such as learning, and books as goods (a major theme with the immense opening up of new avenues for the distribution of information which followed the introduction of printing). Most histories of the Renaissance don't connect the art with the idea of commodities, because it has become considered vulgar to think of art except for its own sake; the Renaissance happened before this shift in perception, and so these histories are not really giving a complete picture. One area which is missing from Worldly Goods is any interest in the less well off, though that is partly because the Renaissance was a phenomenon affecting the upper and middle classes, which made hardly any difference to the lives of the peasants in the fields and the urban poor.

The influence of the author's father is clear, both on the subject matter and the style, but Lisa Jardine is not as brilliant an integrator as Jacob Bronowski; sometimes her writing seems a little bitty and repetitive. Nevertheless, Worldly Goods is very interesting to read, and made me feel that I understood this brilliant period in history a little better than I had done beforehand.

John Keegan: The Face of Battle (1976)

Edition: Penguin, 1984
Review number: 429

Today, John Keegan is widely known as a military historian, and has quite a reputation both in the field and among the public. The Face of Battle is the book which made his name. He sought to show his readers something of the reality of battle, in contrast to the usual concentration on strategy and technology. This is far more difficult to do, for several reasons. Even in these days of near-universal literacy (in the West, at least), generals are far more likely to write about their careers than private soldiers. On a modern battlefield, which can often cover several square miles, confusion reigns so far as the ordinary soldier is concerned. The air is full of smoke and noise, and any attempt to gain a good vantage point from the ground courts immediate death. Much of what can be said is the product of inference and supposition rather than direct testimony, and also involves and facing of rather unpleasant facts about what men can do to other men. The traditional emphasis is understandable, but it does need to be challenged every now and then.

The book itself contains an introductory essay on military historiography, accounts of three battles, and a concluding essay on the way battles have changed over the centuries. The three battles (Agincourt, Waterloo, and the first day of the Somme) are carefully chosen. They took place in a small area of north west Europe, between soldiers of similar cultural backgrounds. (There are anthropological arguments that imply that these are different from battles between widely differing cultures.) They are all, importantly, well documented for their times. Several independent chronicles include accounts of Agincourt, an effort was made to question all the British officers who survived Waterloo, and the impressions of British survivors of the Somme still alive in the sixties were sought out and recorded.

The opening section is distinctly reminiscent of the historiographical essays of M.I. Finley. This is only to be expected, for ancient history and military history bear similar relationships to the mainstream of the subject. Both are traditionally subjects studied by specialists other than historians, both suffer from poor contemporary documentation.

The accounts of the battles, which do not make pleasant reading, are expertly constructed so that the reader is put into the position of the men on the ground while still having an idea of what is going on at a broader level. The principal lesson, as has been indicated, is that battles are far more chaotic and brutal than is implied by traditional accounts, and that this has always been the case.

The trend seems to be that these factors are constantly increasing, and with them the percentage of soldiers made ineffective for reasons other than death and physical suffering. This is the subject discussed in the final essay, along with the question of why men take part in battles at all. There has usually had to be coercion from the rear; the amount of effort expended to stop men escaping from the Western Front was quite considerable, for example. In the late twentieth century, it has reached the point where traditional battles have become virtually impossible, and increasingly scarce. Most modern wars seem to consist of guerilla style operations - which have the advantage of being far cheaper - or massive air bombardments.

George Holmes: The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe (1988)

Edition: Oxford University Press, 1988
Review number: 396

This history, in tone somewhere between a popular and an academic exposition, divides Europe into two zones (north and Mediterranean) and the medieval period into three sections (500-900,900-1200,1200-1500). Each division is covered by a lengthy essay by a different author, making six in all, topped and tailed by short editorial commentaries.

The strength of the editing is indicated by the fact that there is no obvious stylistic change from one chapter to another; the writing is sufficiently uniform to be the work of a single writer. Rather than following political events, the emphasis is on developments on the social and economic fronts, to show the reader a broad outline of the way in which the ancient world transformed itself into the medieval and thence to the modern. English language medieval histories tend to concentrate on England and France; this one has more about Italy and Germany, making a refreshing change.

The illustrations are interesting and well selected - not just the standard pictures which are reproduced endlessly. It would be nice if a few more of them were in colour. There is a small problem with proof reading - in the genealogical table of the kings of Castile, for example, the date of death of Alfonso XI is given as 1350, while in the text a point is made of its being 1349 (he was the only major ruler to die in the massive plague epidemic of that year).

Arthur Hassall: The Balance of Power 1715-1789 (1896)

Edition: Rivingtons
Review number: 359

Part of one of the earliest European histories aimed at the general reader, The Balance of Power summarises the complex politics of the eighteenth century. Now over a century old, it is hardly surprising that the view of history that is offered now seems distinctly old fashioned, but that is far outweighed by the book's man excellent qualities. In fact, it seems much less out of date than many history books written this century, because of the excellent writing.

There can be no doubt that Hassall had a wonderful gift for summarising complicated political manoeuvrings. Balance of Power is still worth reading if you want a straightforward account of this period, more dominated by the personalities of its rulers than almost any other. If, however, you want an account of the development of industrialisation in Europe or the social changes leading to American independence, the French revolution, imperialism or the capitalist system, you would be advised to seek out a more modern history.