The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself
Page 5
In northern Europe the landscape gradually shifted, as the monarchical states began to see the need for more systematic systems of news gathering. Not coincidentally this occurred during a period of intense dynastic competition and fluid alliance politics connected to the contests between England, France and Burgundy in the Hundred Years War. Relying on the despatch of envoys to pursue particular tasks was exceptionally expensive. The head of a mission to Aquitaine in 1327 charged £19 for the twenty-one messengers despatched back to England to inform the king of his progress. A special envoy to the Papal Court in Avignon in 1343 charged £13 for a single journey. The English Crown believed much could be achieved by correspondence. Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward II, despatched around eight hundred letters in a single year (1305–6). His wife Isabella employed two mounted and eleven unmounted messengers, mostly to keep in touch with her family abroad.36
As these examples show, diplomatic correspondence was a major drain on resources. It was important, therefore, that much of the news received by Europe's rulers should not have to be paid for. Courts were great news hubs in their own right. Those drawn to the court included regional magnates with their own networks of communications, and there was constant movement of arrivals and departures of those with favours to ask, or rewards to claim. All courts by the fourteenth century would have their resident poets and chroniclers. Here the victorious knights would repair to ensure that their deeds of renown were known and recorded. When Jean Froissart, the quintessential chronicler of chivalry, set about collecting the information for the third volume of his Chronicles, he travelled to the court of Gaston, Count of Foix, at Orthez in southern France. Here he found gathered men eager to provide him with copy:
In the hall, in the chamber and in the courtyard, worthy knights and esquires came and went, and one heard them talking of arms and adventures. Every subject of honour was discussed there. News from every country and kingdom was to be heard there, for, because of the reputation of the master of the house, they were brought there from every country. There I was informed of most of the feats of arms which had taken place in Spain, Portugal, Aragon, Navarre, England, Scotland and within the frontiers and borders of Languedoc, for while I was staying there knights and esquires from all those nations came to visit the count. And so I gathered information either from them or from the count himself, who was always willing to talk to me.37
Europe's rulers were in a unique position to command service and appropriate the necessary resources for news gathering. But as this example shows, many great nobles also established what was in effect a royal court in miniature, sending out messengers to enforce authority in their lands, and exchanging letters with allies or far-flung relatives. By the fourteenth century many city governments also felt the need to maintain their own couriers. In London the volume of letter-writing demanded by civic authorities, guilds and private individuals led to the incorporation of a formal craft, the Scriveners’ Company.38
News Management
These embryonic systems suffered considerable disruption in the century after 1350. First the Black Death, then prolonged periods of warfare, put strains on both royal finances and royal authority. It became less easy to enforce the duty to provide horses and hospitality for royal messengers. Roads were less safe and appear to have deteriorated in quality. In France this was a period first of near disintegration, then gradual reconstruction after the Hundred Years War. Such events made the need for reliable information all the more urgent, even while its provision became more hazardous.39 In England the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses, when the Crown changed hands repeatedly and most of the leading protagonists died a violent death, made it exceptionally difficult to stay abreast of events. On hearing an apparently authentic report of the death of King Edward IV on 6 April 1483, the mayor of York ordered a requiem Mass to be said the following day. In fact, the king was still alive until 9 April.40
With so much false information swirling around, it was sometimes necessary to take extraordinary steps to ensure that true reports were given credence. Since the battle of Barnet (1471) took place very close to London, wild rumours circulated in the city, and the first reports of the Yorkist victory were not believed. It was only when a mounted rider rode through Westminster carrying the king's gauntlet, his token to the queen of his success, that Londoners knew the outcome. King Edward's decision to exhibit the corpse of the defeated Earl of Warwick in St Paul's Cathedral was also shrewd. When reports began to circulate that Warwick had survived, too many people were able to give this the lie.
In these febrile times, both contending parties gave more attention to news management. After the battle of St Albans in 1455 and again after Towton (1461) and Tewkesbury (1471), the victorious party circulated written reports detailing events. These are sometimes referred to as newsletters, though there is no evidence of systematic mass production. The surviving copies are manuscripts circulated to influential figures in local society keen to align themselves to the change in events.41 The most significant events were made known to the citizens of London and other towns in proclamations which would be publicly read in the churches or marketplace. This form of law-making and news management was an enduring feature of government in many parts of Europe until at least the seventeenth century.42
The French Crown too gave attention to the manipulation of opinion. An early and precocious example was the flurry of writings that followed the assassination of John, Duke of Burgundy, in 1419. These were intended to win over those wavering in their loyalty to the dauphin Charles, the leader of French resistance to the Anglo-Burgundian alliance who had certainly been involved in the duke's murder.43 Although such manuscripts undoubtedly circulated at this point in rather restricted circles, they prepared the way for a more intensive propaganda in defence of French rights, which at some point engaged most of France's greatest medieval writers.44
Despite the considerable progress made in the development of information networks, credible information could still arrive in curiously haphazard ways. A Norfolk man learned the outcome of the battle of Barnet when he saw the dead body of the Earl of Warwick exhibited at St Pauls. Wanting to be first to carry the news home, he left London by boat the same day, but was waylaid at sea and landed by his captors on the coast of Holland. His story was quickly relayed to Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, at Ghent, who immediately passed this vital intelligence to her husband Charles, at Corbie near Amiens.45 Thus Edward IV's influential ally had news of his success within four days, but only by happenstance.
In all these circumstances it is no surprise that Europe's rulers began to pay increasing attention to the establishment of a regular, reliable postal service that would give them privileged and rapid access to vital political information. This was the motivation behind the creation in the fifteenth century of a series of royal postal relays. The first successful experiment of this sort was the achievement of the aforementioned Frederick III, then King of the Romans, who in 1443 established a relay between Feldkirch and Vienna in his Austrian dominions. More ambitious by far was the national network of postal couriers established by King Louis XI of France (r. 1461–83). As a child Louis had experienced at first hand the humiliating weakness of the French Crown before the expulsion of the English. Even after the recovery of Paris and northern France, his reign was plagued by internecine feuding in the royal family and with the great nobility. So his creation of a communications network under royal control was both a potent symbol of restored Crown authority and an important tool in the endless struggle to keep one step ahead of restless subjects. Louis's scheme called for the establishment of relay stations on all of the main routes leading through and out of the kingdom.46 Salaried postmasters were appointed to man each station; their duties required them to maintain horses for the royal couriers speeding through. Following the practice established in the Roman Empire, and continued by the Tassis for the imperial post, the postmaster was to note on the docket the time of arrival and departure of ea
ch courier. The system, in principle at least, was closely regulated, and exclusively for royal service. Sentence of death was prescribed for postmasters who allowed their horses to be used by other customers. The couriers carried detailed passports specifying their destination, and they were not permitted to deviate from the route. Foreign couriers were also obliged to keep to the postal routes, or they would be stripped of their safe conducts.
The French experiment inspired Edward IV of England to devise a similar system for the kingdom's most critical news artery: the road to Scotland. The short route between London and the Channel ports was already covered by a system of posts, which obliged the towns along the way to bear most of the cost of speeding royal messengers to the coast. The longer distance to the northern border was more challenging. In 1482 King Edward devised a scheme whereby a mounted messenger was posted at 20-mile intervals. When an important message was to be transported, each messenger would ride to the next sector, before returning to their post.47 This was ruinously expensive and hardly likely to be maintained outside the present emergency.
The French system, too, proved over-ambitious, and far too expensive to be maintained for any length of time. After the death of Louis XI it was scaled back and fell into disuse. Both Edward and Louis had faced two apparently intractable problems: they could only command the necessary resources for this system to function within their own dominions, which was very limiting from the point of view of international news gathering; and the postal routes could not be made financially self-supporting. These travails, which continued for much of the sixteenth century, point up the particular brilliance of the Habsburg imperial post. By employing a family of private contractors, Emperor Maximilian had passed the problem of making the system work to a group of specialists who were working for profit. The contract of 1505 specified a fixed yearly payment of 12,000 livres. In return the Tassis agreed guaranteed times of delivery between the major postal destinations. Significantly, these included Paris: being private contractors, rather than a royal service, they could operate to some extent outside the Habsburgs’ own domains.
Map 1 The imperial postal system in the sixteenth century.
The accession of Charles V and his succession as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 allowed the imperial postal service to extend its range still further. A new contract with Charles in 1516 did one other remarkable thing: it allowed the Tassis to open their postal service to private customers. As a consequence the imperial postal service vastly increased the volume of business, which meant most of those involved could hope to share in the profits. This was a major contrast with the English and French systems, which remained closed royal networks into the seventeenth century. With these restrictions English postmasters were grudgingly aware that their meagre fees would hardly ever cover their expenses. The imperial post was in a highly advantageous situation, since Habsburg domains sat astride many of Europe's major trade routes. But it was also an acknowledgement that to be effective a European communications system had also to serve the needs of Europe's merchant traders.
The centuries before the inauguration of the Habsburg postal system had seen enormous strides in the development of a concept of news. The practical difficulties in creating such an infrastructure were very significant, but the notion of news also required a considerable intellectual reorientation, which was far from complete by the end of this period. The increase in written communication and the accumulation of documentation since the twelfth century did not immediately challenge the perceived superiority of the spoken word.48 Medieval society was built around the transmission of information in face-to-face meetings. The main modes of communication were all oral: preaching, lectures in the universities, the proclamation of new laws, tales of wandering minstrels, and this included the sharing of news. ‘My cosyn John Loveday can tell you, for he hath walked in London and so do not I,’ wrote John Paston in 1471 in response to a request for news, and he reflected a common contemporary perception of the superiority of eyewitness reports transmitted verbally.49 The trust and reliability of a news report were closely attached to the credit of the bearer: this could hardly be judged in the case of an anonymous writing. Even with the vast increase of written documentation, many of these letters were, as we have seen, highly stylised and uninformative. They were intended to demonstrate the learning of the writer or attest to the credit of the bearer: the critical information was still delivered by word of mouth.
Much of the news communicated in medieval society was still a matter of the spoken word, and thus frustratingly often lost. We have to delve into other sources, such as chronicles, to attest the lively interest in receiving and sharing news. The one main exception, which has been left to its own chapter, is the correspondence generated by the growing international network of trade. Long-distance commerce of necessity separated merchants from their partners and agents. They had, therefore, to develop systems of sharing news, in an atmosphere of trust, and with a reasonable expectation that their correspondents would act on the information. It was a critical development in the history of news gathering.
CHAPTER 2
The Wheels of Commerce
WHEN one considers the problems and expense that Europe's crowned heads experienced in keeping abreast of events – and how often they failed to do so – the smooth, efficient progress of merchant correspondence provides a vivid contrast. Between 1200 and 1500 the economy of Europe was transformed by the rise of the great merchant companies, trading between Italy and northern Europe, Germany, the Mediterranean and the Levant. The appetite for eastern luxuries, spices and costly fabrics, exchanged for northern wool and cloth, created a large and expansive marketplace, full of opportunity for the bold and ingenious trader. The hazards were also obvious. A ship could be lost at sea, consignments of goods waylaid on Europe's perilous roads. The intricacies of the money markets created new complexities for those who failed to master the ever-changing exchange rates. And politics – war, dynastic conflicts or civil disorder – could derail even the most carefully managed enterprise.
To succeed in this labyrinthine and unpredictable world, merchants had to remain informed. In the thirteenth century a certain class of merchant ceased to travel with their goods and instead attempted to manage their business through brokers and agents. At that stage the growth of a network of merchant correspondence became inevitable. The essential building blocks were already in place. Unlike the princes, who had to create such a network from scratch, merchants had ships, and a far-flung network of agents and warehouses. Carts, couriers and pack animals passed back and forth every day between Europe's major trading towns. They carried with them news and, increasingly, written correspondence.
Even so, the volume of this correspondence is breathtaking. We get a flavour of its magnitude by examining the well-documented example of Francesco Datini, a merchant of Prato in Tuscany. Datini was never a member of one of the great merchant families. A self-made man, he had amassed his fortune trading in armaments in Avignon before returning to his home town in middle age. Operating through a series of ad hoc partnerships, he consolidated his wealth by shrewd diversification into banking and general trade. Between 1383 and 1394 he established branch offices at Pisa, Genoa, in Spain and Majorca.1 For all this Datini remained a man of the second rank: his fortune, when he died in 1410, was a respectable 15,000 florins. Yet he also left behind five hundred account books and ledgers, several thousand insurance policies, bills of exchange and deeds, and a staggering 126,000 items of business correspondence.2 Thanks to this survival (the childless Datini left all his property to the local poor) they comprise one of the greatest archives for understanding the international medieval economy.
That a middle-ranking merchant could accumulate such an extraordinary documentary archive seems highly exceptional, but in its day it was probably routine: the Datini archive was unusual only in its survival. It was contingent, however, on one further technological revolution, as significant in its way as any other of the medieval
period: the introduction of paper. Parchment (often known as vellum), made from scraped animal skins, had served the medieval world well. It was hardy, took ink smoothly and evenly, and was very durable, as witnessed by the quantities of parchment documents that survive today. Parchment was also, to an extent, reusable. But it was brittle, and could not easily be folded. It had to be cut from the shape of the skin, with considerable waste from trimming. It was also expensive. The raw material was finite, and took a long time to prepare. The volume of documentation generated by commerce and the expanding state bureaucracies demanded a more flexible and cost-effective writing medium.
Paper entered Europe via Moorish Spain in the twelfth century. Within a hundred years paper mills had been established in Italy, France and Germany. The technology, though capital intensive, was relatively simple. Paper-making demanded an abundance of linen rags and swift running water to power the mills that pounded the rags into mulch. Paper mills were usually constructed in hilly regions close to major centres of population. By the thirteenth century they were turning out a sophisticated range of paper products in carefully graded weights and sizes. Parchment continued to be preferred for precious documents intended to be preserved: charters, deeds and manuscript books. Paper also took longer to enter general use in northern Europe, where the raw materials were harder to come by, because in the colder weather people wore clothes made of wool rather than linen. In England there was no domestic paper manufacture until the eighteenth century, so all paper had to be imported. But despite this, by the fourteenth century paper was the preferred medium for all mundane purposes of record-keeping and correspondence throughout Europe. This humble artefact had established the dominant role in information culture that it retained into the last decades of the twentieth century.