The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  In a culture that revered martial qualities, knights like William naturally hungered after opportunities to hone and to display their prowess. They had not spent long years training as warriors for nothing. More basic, practical requirements for financial reward and security also had to be addressed. Many knights might find long-term positions in aristocratic households, or mesnie, but unless Europe was to go up in flames, the need for such warriors in actual war was always going to be finite. The onset of peace in northern France in 1166 showed how any lull in fighting could leave members of the knightly class surplus to requirements. Under such circumstances, a spiral of lawlessness and discord could take hold, as lords actively sought reasons to put their prized warriors in the field – through border disputes or raiding – and predatory packs of ‘freelance’ knights roamed the landscape.*

  The knightly tournament emerged in response to this dilemma, as organised contests in which medieval warriors could fight under controlled conditions, earning both renown and financial reward. The first small-scale tourneys appeared in the eleventh century, but after 1100 events became larger and more frequent, especially in north-eastern France, across regions such as Flanders, Hainault and Picardy. This area – nestled between the great German Empire and the small kingdom of France (centred around Paris) – had been particularly unruly in the eleventh century: the site of ruinous, thuggish feuding between rival warlords. By the mid-1160s, when William Marshal was knighted, tournaments were being held throughout Western Europe, including parts of the Angevin realm. These contests captured the aristocratic and knightly imagination, becoming the great craze of the day.

  In the wake of the Neufchâtel campaign, news spread through Normandy that a tournament would be held just north of Le Mans. The History of William Marshal declared that ‘any man seeking to win renown would go to tournaments, if he had the wherewithal’. Not surprisingly, William was attracted by the chance to prove his skills, but the question of a warhorse remained. The lord of Tancarville announced his intention to attend the event, leading a group of forty knights, and though Marshal was allowed to tag along, he was said to have been ‘downcast’ at the prospect of having to ride a mere palfrey into the fray. Finally, on the very eve of the tournament, the chamberlain relented – perhaps the prospect of seeing his young cousin shamed by fighting astride a lowly riding horse proved too much to bear.

  William was given a destrier, but the very last one available. The steed looked the part, being ‘strong, fine and well-proportioned’, but it turned out that most of the Tancarville household regarded it as unrideable because the animal ‘was so wild it could not be tamed’. William did his best, loosening the horse’s bridle to make it more even-tempered, but he must have looked ahead to the next day with a degree of trepidation.

  Entering a tournament was a gamble at the best of times. Success might bring William a measure of distinction and some much-needed financial reward. But the risks were not insignificant. Failure would only deepen his penury – knights, and their families, were known to have been ruined by the debts accrued through repeated tournament defeats – and William chanced injury or worse. Combat in these events was conducted in a ‘controlled’ setting, but there is no indication that tournament knights used specific, blunted weapons. They had to rely on their prowess and their armour to save them. Under these conditions, wounds and broken bones were commonplace, and even death was a possibility, especially if you were unhorsed and trampled by other mounts. Records indicate that in one particularly bad year, fifteen knights died tourneying in Germany. With all these risks and dangers in mind, holding his future in his hands, William embarked upon his first tournament.

  THE TOURNAMENT

  It would be tempting to impose a modern fantasy of the medieval world upon the twelfth-century tournament. To imagine William pitted against opponents in a well-ordered, almost genteel, joust, bevies of noble maidens agog at the sight of Marshal’s prowess. But the world of the joust belonged to a different age, still more than a century in the future. Knightly tournaments in William’s day were entirely different beasts: imbued with some pageantry and awash with colour, yes, but riotous, chaotic affairs, tantamount to large-scale war games, played out by teams of mounted knights across great swathes of territory. The origin of the term ‘tournament’ gives a sense of the spectacle involved – being derived from the French ‘torner’ (to revolve) – evoking a whirling swarm of knights, though contemporaries also referred to these events as a ‘recreation’, ‘amusement’ or, in Latin, simply as a ‘ludus’ (game).

  Tournaments were a critical feature of knightly culture and lifestyle in the central Middle Ages. Kings often viewed these events with suspicion – allowing great lords to assemble with hundreds of warriors seemed like an invitation to insurrection, even open rebellion. To the Church they were dangerous and wasteful extravagances, and it did its best to stamp them out. A succession of papal pronouncements outlawed these ‘detestable revels and shows’ as fonts of pride and vanity, cautioning that anyone who died in such fighting would be denied a Christian burial. By the thirteenth century, clerics liked to suggest that slain tournament knights might either return as tormented spectres or languish in hell, condemned to an eternity in burning armour. But knights and their lords refused to listen. Across France, Germany, the Low Countries and northern Iberia they engaged in and sponsored tournaments regardless.

  The vogue for these military contests took hold just as William reached adulthood. They were the closest thing to a professional sport in his world, only with higher stakes and a clear emphasis on the ‘game’ as training for real medieval warfare, and in time they would become a fundamental feature of Marshal’s career. His first tournament, held between Sainte Jamme and Valennes, was fairly typical for its time. Played out not within some confined arena, but across an open area of landscape thirty miles wide, it involved hundreds of knights drawn from across the Angevin realm, as well as ‘a numerous company’ led by King William of Scotland and the revered warrior Philip of Valognes, described by the History as ‘the handsomest knight of all’.

  The mechanics of the medieval tournament

  In common with so much of knightly culture and custom, the practical mechanics of the tournament – its rituals, rules and regulations – came together during William Marshal’s lifetime. Events were held through most of the year, excepting the period from Lent to Easter, sometimes as frequently as every two weeks. Notice of an impending tournament would customarily be given well in advance, to allow time for preparation and travel, but an established schedule of well-known contests soon developed – the equivalent of a tournament circuit. Northern French events were usually held between two designated sites, as in Sainte Jamme and Valennes, located in the hinterland between established lordships and well away from major cities like Paris or Rouen. Most resembled a war game between two sides, with the likes of the English, Normans, Angevins and Poitevins on one team, and the ‘French’ from regions such as Flanders, Burgundy, Blois and Champagne on the other, and often the ‘teams’ would congregate at the specified settlements at least a day in advance.

  The simple fact of hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of knights and their servants travelling from one tournament to the next, all requiring lodging and food, caused significant local disruption. The History of William Marshal described how an event held some years later in Champagne attracted so many participants, all coming from different directions, ‘that the whole district was swarming with them and taken by storm’. Large, prosperous fairs were established at major tournament venues, with armourers, farriers, craftsmen, merchants and entertainers all coming to ply their trade. In time, events acquired many of the trappings of the modern music festival – the massed crowds and tented cities, the glorious spectacle and ostentatious display, even the notion of celebrity.

  Most tournaments were fought on a single day, though some preliminary contests might take place on the last evening before the main event: training matches betw
een pairs of swordsmen, or one-on-one jousts in which knights sought to unhorse their opponents with a lance. This was often an occasion for green warriors like William to get their first experience, though he did not do so at Sainte Jamme, perhaps because he was too busy trying to master his unruly warhorse. It also gave knights an opportunity to gain the measure of their opponents, though unscrupulous (or canny) old hands sometimes watched these fight in the hope of marking out weaker, inexpert quarry, ripe for capture the following day. For many, the eve of the tournament was a time for socialising. Wealthier lords and knights typically took lodgings, rather than resorting to the use of tents, and it was customary for the great and the good to visit one another, sharing stories and gossip, renewing friendships and alliances.

  The day of the tournament itself began with a flurry of final preparations: the laborious process of pulling on mail hauberks, coifs and leggings, usually achieved with the assistance of a squire, the fine adjustment of shield straps and horse tack, a last check of lance, sword and perhaps mace, a test of helmet fit, though this cumbersome piece of armour would not be donned until just before the fighting began. Amid all of this clamorous activity, most knights found the time to consume some breakfast – a piece of early thirteenth-century chivalric literature cautioned tournament-goers not to forget to eat in the excitement of the moment. After 1200 it also became common for warriors to start the day with religious observance, prayer and the taking of Mass – all steps to gird the soul should the worst happen, though the famed thirteenth-century German knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein admitted that he prayed for luck more than anything else.

  Around mid-morning, the various retinues of knights began to gather at one of two opposing ‘lists’. These were the makeshift fences or pens where teams congregated, probably placed on this occasion just to the south-east of Sainte Jamme. William’s biographer described how a more sober atmosphere took hold as the ‘companies rode forward in tight and ordered formation’ to join the Norman and English team. The time for joking, idle boasts and threats was past. Visual display was central to the tournament. Being seen to possess the finest, most resplendent arms and armour mattered to William and his peers; indeed, the History noted that the Tancarville knights were up half of the night burnishing their mail.

  The tournament field was also flooded with brilliant colours. The two main teams seem to have been distinguished by huge banners held aloft in their midsts, marked with distinctive colour schemes, patterns and devices, with that of the Norman–English team depicting two golden lions against a red background. The smaller component parts of each massed team – the individual military retinues, like that of Tancarville – also fought under their own identifying banners and by 1166 it was customary for knights to sport these colours and devices, either on shields or on cloth surcoats worn over their armour. The Tancarville colours of the day – and thus, those now worn by William – appear to have been white with a red border.

  The use of banners and vivid designs had their origins in practical military necessity. These striking visual markers allowed warriors to instantly navigate their way through the frenzied confusion of medieval combat: to locate and follow their lord and fellow knights; and, just as importantly, to identify opponents and enemies. William soon discovered that, both on the tournament field and in real-life combat, there was enormous advantage to be gained from fighting in packs, not the tightly ordered ranks of a Roman legion, but looser, yet nonetheless coherent, groups of warriors, moving together and protecting one another. In the twelfth century, that type of coordination required unmistakeable visual cues. This seems to be how the notion of heraldry evolved in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Certainly by the end of William’s long life, nobles across Europe were increasingly expected to adopt specific identifying colours and devices. Soon, the bewildering number of these ‘coats of arms’ was such that individuals were employed to memorise them and then move through the lists before a tournament, naming each contingent – these men were the first heralds.

  Sound also had its part to play. Medieval commanders routinely made use of drums, horns and trumpets to deliver aural signals, aiming to achieve some measure of control over their troops, while also stirring hearts. In later decades, rousing music might accompany the preliminary stages of a tournament, inspiring knights as they prepared for the fight to come, though none seems to have been played at Sainte Jamme. However, William and his peers were already using specific war cries to rally and direct one another. At Neufchâtel Marshal had shouted ‘Tancarville’ to rouse his fellow knights, and that was probably the call his retinue used now. Most war cries were similarly simple, invoking single place names, kings or saints, though they could involve slightly more complex formulae. The traditional Norman rally cry was ‘Dex aïe’ (‘God our help’), while knights from the French town of Châtillon, near Paris, shouted ‘Alom lour Châtillon’ (‘Go get them Châtillon’).

  Once William Marshal and all the other knights had assembled at the lists outside Sainte Jamme, the two sides rode out to prepare for the main event of the day: the great mêlée. Knights on the opposing sides customarily took up positions, facing one another across an open field, often in single extended lines. Helmets were donned and a hush settled across the throng. Then, at a shout or horn-blast, the main charge began. This awe-inspiring spectacle of blurred colour and deafening noise reached a crescendo as the two sides crashed into one another with shuddering force, and the fighting began. These were the most dangerous moments of the day. William learnt over the years that to panic, lose control of your horse and fall in the middle of this wheeling mass of knights was to court death, and he witnessed many disasters first-hand. Success, even basic survival, required steely nerves, physical strength and masterful horsemanship.

  During most tournaments, after the first phases of combat, the mêlée would break up into smaller contests, played out over many miles of countryside. In the course of this extended war game, contingents of warriors might try to use the landscape to their advantage, set ambushes, even attempt to hide. The whole affair could take hours, sometimes lasting till dusk. Like every participant, William’s goal in all this was to capture opponents using a mixture of skill, brute force and guile, while avoiding being taken prisoner himself and protecting his lord. The crucial dynamic of the entire tournament was that success brought reward; not only reputation and honour, but also material gain, because captive knights were expected to pay a ransom in return for release – usually in cash – and might also relinquish their horse, arms and armour. Given that this was his first attempt, William did remarkably well at Sainte Jamme, securing ‘two very valuable prisoners’: one an unnamed knight whom he battered to the ground with the stump of a lance; and the prize of the day, Philip of Valognes, taken early in the general mêlée when Marshal deftly rode in and grabbed the bridle of Philip’s mount. This neat trick – akin to snatching the steering wheel – was devilishly difficult to pull off, but gave William effective control over his adversary’s horse, enabling him to ‘drag [Philip] away from the tournament’. Thus immobilised, he submitted and promised to pay a ransom.

  This tournament transformed William’s fortunes, setting him on the path to financial security. ‘Only that day’, the History noted, ‘Marshal had been a poor man as regards possessions and horses’, yet he came away with four warhorses, as well as hacks, palfreys, sumpters and harnesses. After Sainte Jamme, the attitude of the Tancarville household altered. Impressed by the rich pickings he had accrued, ‘they paid Marshal great honour and treated him so courteously, more so than before’. As William’s biographer candidly admitted, material assets symbolised status; they marked Marshal out as a man of means and substance. As the History bluntly put it: ‘You are what you have got, and no more than that.’

  Tournaments played an essential role in shaping and defining the knightly class as a whole across Western Europe, and would become a critical feature of William Marshal’s own career. Being full-s
cale war games, rather than mannered individual combats, these events offered valuable, perhaps even essential, training for war. As one contemporary chronicler put it when singing the tournament’s praises: ‘the science of battle, if not practised beforehand, cannot be summoned when necessary’. William’s success at Sainte Jamme proved that tournaments also provided real opportunities for advancement. But, beyond these practical issues lay deeper, conceptual concerns. The tournament gave medieval knights and their lords a perfect opportunity to display their qualities: to show prowess through martial skill, to prove one’s honour by respecting the rules of the game, to exhibit largesse by organising events or fitting out one’s retinue and to affirm status by being seen either within, or better still at the head of, a large, finely equipped military entourage. In the later twelfth century, the tournament was where you showed yourself to be the archetypal preudhomme – the best kind of man.

  All of this served to heighten the importance of visual display. Tournaments were events that demanded an audience; acts of valour and feats of arms had to be witnessed if they were to garner renown. There was more than a whiff of shallow narcissism and conceit about the whole affair, with as much, if not more, emphasis placed on being seen to do the right thing, as the action itself. To modern sensibilities this can all seem rather distasteful, and some contemporaries were equally unimpressed. The famed early thirteenth-century churchman and preacher, Jacques of Vitry, denounced tournaments as breeding grounds for deadly sins like pride and vanity. Nonetheless, in the History of William Marshal, the strong emphasis on spectacle and display seems utterly unselfconscious. For men like William, the need for an audience was a simple fact of knightly life.