A foreign visitor would first encounter the emperor at almost eye level, the chair raised just a little to convey proper superiority. But when the ambassador rose from the standard greeting of kneeling to touch his face to the ground in respect, the emperor sat high above his head, as if flying.
Oh, and to make absolutely sure the visitor was the proper degree of impressed and humbled, as the ambassador prepared to leave, the lion would stand up and then crouch back down. The birds would go silent, but suddenly music would fill the air as if an entire orchestra were playing.
Again: robots. In the Middle Ages.
STRATEGY #3: PUBLICIZE IT
Why sit back and wait for ambassadors to come be impressed? Medieval Muslim rulers made a near-habit of gifting wood and metal come to life to their western European counterparts, whose own automata were limited to the dreams of poets. In 807—almost half a millennium before the Latin west could engineer similar technology—an Abbasid caliph sent a Holy Roman emperor a water clock. Or rather: a water cuckoo clock. The hour was loudly announced by the clang of the right number of bronze balls against a basin, while being quietly announced by the appearance, and then disappearance, of the corresponding number of little men on horseback. That’s just plain showing off.
Fast-forward to 1232. That year, one of the Ayyubid sultans sent Holy Roman emperor Frederick II a clock that had no interest in primitive earthbound material like water. It required its own tent, which is less extravagant than it sounds when you consider that people called it—really—a planetarium. And it contained the entire cosmos. The hours of the day were followed by the circular course of a model of the sun. The hours of the night were marked by the same trajectory of the moon.
In return, Frederick sent a white bear and a peacock.
STRATEGY #4: MAINTAIN IT
Half a century after that diplomatic gift exchange, western Europe was finally smart enough to build its own automata. In 1302, Countess Matilda of Artois and Burgundy inherited a lavish garden that seamlessly blended natural and mechanized wonder. Living birds mixed with mechanical ones. A small river flowed lazily through the park, pausing to power multiple fountains. People could cross the river on a bridge adorned with moving, fur-coated monkeys. Or they could dine among the marvels in sunlight-filled buildings. But by the time Matilda took possession of it, things were starting to fall apart.
Matilda mobilized. And just as importantly, she had the money to back it up. Only two years after she took possession, the monkeys’ fur looked like new again. The fountains eventually faltered, but soon splashed down their water once again. By 1314, her metallic birds shone with fresh, thick layers of real gold. Artificial and natural sounds filled the air.
Make no mistake, automata could still represent political manipulation and posturing. But Matilda spent more and more time at this particular palace, marveling at its wonders and adapting them to her own delight.
Like how she had her engineers repair her monkeys by adding horns so they resembled demons. About that delight…
STRATEGY N/A
Even if you aren’t impressed by it, can’t expand it, shouldn’t publicize it, and don’t want to maintain it, don’t do the following. (And I don’t mean making demons.)
The Ottoman Empire finished off the Byzantine Empire in 1453, and besieged Vienna in 1529. Then they… stopped. In exchange, more or less, the Holy Roman Empire (hereinafter “the Germans”) had to pay the Ottoman Empire (hereinafter “the Ottomans”) a bribe (hereinafter “a tribute”) to stay put. And every year, the Germans paid their tribute partially in automata. Which the Ottomans unfailingly dismantled for their parts and melted down for their precious metals.
After a few years, the Germans started sending a clockmaker to Constantinople in addition to the automata, to make sure they still worked. The mechanical devices consistently arrived in perfect working order. And just as consistently, the Ottomans melted them down. As their rivals knew perfectly well would happen. The Ottomans believed human-crafted automata usurped the singular power of God. Their very existence was sacrilege.
So, with beautiful passive-aggression from all, the Germans kept sending automata. And the Ottomans kept destroying them. Magic, wonder, marvel? All silenced, all lost, by both parties. Premodern robots and their destruction were the snottiest of diplomatic weapons.
Automata did, technically, help prevent the exchange of cannonballs and bullets. They just kept the two enemies very, very mad. In case you were wondering—no, starting a premodern Cold War is not a good way to befriend an enchanted forest.
HOW to CROSS the BARREN WASTES
If there was one thing that Duke Philip of Burgundy loved more than betraying various allies during the Hundred Years’ War and still winding up with the name “the Good,” it was the Crusades. The official crusades may have ended centuries before his time, but Philip (1396–1467) was a dreamer. He idolized the Crusaders. He longed to lead his own crusade. He even gave his vow to crusade a special name: the Oath of the Pheasant.
So, when Philip sent a scout on, shall we say, an intelligence-gathering mission to Jerusalem, he picked Bertrandon de la Broquière, the best spy in the world. Thus, Bertrandon is likely your best guide to the barren wastes—and how to win the day when its hardy, crafty, and wise residents somehow still need your aid.
Bertrandon (d. 1459) knew there was one way to get to the Near East: the Mediterranean and then the barren Sinai Desert. He also knew there were two ways to get home. The first was back across the Mediterranean; the second was up through Syria, across the expanse of the Anatolian interior, and across the Balkans. Again and again, Bertrandon heard that you could take the overland route a thousand times and die on every trip. But Bertrandon was determined to take the thousand-and-first trip, living to tell the tale.
And when he arrived back in Burgundy, he wrote a lavish account of his trip and made sure multiple copies were made. So young hero, I advise you to pick up that codex of his Le voyage d’outremer and get to learning the secrets of taming the deserts and dust storms of the barren wastes.
1. TAKE MONEY
Crossing a desert? The first thing you’re going to do is buy or rent a camel, which will make the trip far more comfortable for you. The second thing you’re going to do is hire a guide whose caravans will offer some protection against bandits and getting lost. The third thing you’re going to do is look at your camel and sigh, because you’ll have to buy or rent a donkey from your guide, who won’t take you along if you don’t.
Crafty Bertrandon explained that he avoided this fate by appealing to the governor in Gaza, who of course decided in his favor. But then, to earn the extra money that he should have brought, Bertrandon sold wine to a local Muslim who could not legally buy it from another Muslim. It was a common practice, but it gave that first caravan leader a chance to have Bertrandon arrested and thrown in jail. This time, Bertrandon was saved not by himself but by a Christian slave trader.
The lesson here? Bring along enough money to avoid making enslavers the heroes of the barren wastes.
2. HIDE THAT MONEY
Throughout his intelligence-gathering mission, Bertrandon was very careful to keep his money inside his clothing or sewn into it. (This strategy explains the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century epidemic of naked robbery victims around medieval Nuremberg, and probably other medieval cities.) It served him well at the Serdenay monastery outside Damascus. He entered its church to view an image of the Virgin Mary that was said to sweat oil. A woman flew at him out of nowhere and attempted to anoint him with what she hoped Bertrandon would think was the sweated oil. Bertrandon yanked himself free, not giving her the chance to pickpocket him or to entreat a “donation” for the anointing.
Don’t let your purse become the barren waste.
3. DISGUISE YOURSELF
When Bertrandon’s local friends, who were probably handsomely paid guides, handed him a set of clothing, Bertrandon never even hesitated. For example, on the trip from Damascus t
o Bursa, the stakes could not have been higher. Bertrandon temporarily joined a caravan bound for Mecca, which was… not a good idea for a Christian. His guide smartly dressed Bertrandon in a long white robe over dark pants, a turban, and a linen girdle. It was the clothing of an enslaved man, making him easy to overlook.
Bertrandon’s periodic changes of clothing do suggest two important questions: How many sets of your own clothing will you need, and how are you supposed to do laundry in the middle of a wasteland? For some reason, Bertrandon’s codex fails to provide answers to either.
4. STUDY THEIR FORTRESSES
Because the word “barren” in “barren wastes” deserves quotation marks, you should follow Bertrandon’s lead in his careful observation and description of any inhabited or deserted fortresses. For example, guarding the strategically placed city of Damascus, there is a small castle on a hillside that is surrounded by a moat.
In the city itself, there was a centuries-old stone funduq that used to be the private home of a wealthy local named Bertok. When the brilliant Mongol ruler Timur conquered Damascus in 1400, he utterly devastated the entire city—except this funduq, around which he even placed a guard to ensure its protection from fires and looting. The locals apparently did not explain why Timur spared the building, but perhaps it had something to do with beauty. Bertrandon took special interest in noting the fleur-de-lis decorations carved into the exterior stone.
Does something seem a little bit… off… about Bertrandon’s intelligence-gathering priorities? Take better notes of the land on your own trip, and maybe start taking some notes about the purpose of his Le voyage d’outremer.
5. MASTER LOCAL WEAPONRY
The gradual infiltration of gunpowder artillery into western European warfare created a race to possess better and better guns and cannons. As a proper spy, Bertrandon not only mastered Turkish martial technology but also ensured his employer would be able to replicate it.
In Beirut, Bertrandon witnessed a sunset feast that featured singing, wailing, and cannons whose artillery left fiery trails across the sky. He speculated on various ways the cannons might be used to kill people or to frighten horses (interesting priorities), and decided it was worth the risk and the money to learn to make them. He bribed the chief artillery-maker to reveal the ingredients and construction. Bertrandon acquired those ingredients, plus the wooden molds essential for the missiles’ construction. As his book proudly declares, he brought them back to France with him.
What his book does not proudly declare is how he carried the molds from Beirut to Damascus, up through all of Syria, across Anatolia to Constantinople, across the Balkans to Vienna, and from Vienna across the Holy Roman Empire to the king of France. In fact, in his later catalogues of possessions and clothing, he never mentions the molds again.
It certainly seems like when it comes to weaponry, Bertrandon is more interested in literary flourishes than the actual weapons. No, his priorities are definitely not the priorities of the best spy in the world. But how can you have a heroic quest without some suspension of disbelief?
6. HEIGHTEN THE DRAMA
Despite the financial risks of a general monastery stop and the specific risks of a monastery in the middle of the Sinai, brave Bertrandon was determined to visit St. Catherine’s. Le voyage d’outremer skims over two days of boredom on the way there when suddenly—out of nowhere—a meter-long beast burst onto the scene! The local guides shrieked. But it was the lizard who scuttled away and hid behind a rock. Bertrandon and his companions Andrew de Toulongeon and Pierre de Vautrei dismounted, and the two French knights set off after the creature waving their swords. The beast, barely a handspan high but a whole meter long, remember, let out a terrified scream “like a cat on the approach of a dog” but fearsome, you understand.7 The knights struck the creature on the back, to no avail! Its scales were like armor!
But somehow, Sir Andrew managed to find a weakness with his sword and throw the animal onto its back. He stabbed it with great gusto, finally killing the desert’s terrifying spawn.
Only when the battle was done did Bertrandon pause to relate that his party was never in any danger, just, the Arabs were scared and the Europeans weren’t.
The scene provides action, tension, and triumph. It uses the killing of a terrified animal to develop the heroism of western Christians specifically named, and the cowardice of eastern Muslims in general.
Bertrandon’s “espionage report” would seem to have characters and a plot. Is your confidence in its usefulness starting to wane?
7. ADD A TOKEN FEMALE
What do you mean, “lack of women” is what’s wrong? The con artist in the church at Serdenay was very clearly a woman.
Still, Bertrandon had made it almost all the way across Turkey when he just casually mentioned—for the first time in the entire book—that there was a woman traveling along with his party. The wife of Hoyarbarach received a letter that her father had died, and she wept excessively. Also, she was very beautiful, according to the man gazing at her.
What do you mean, that’s not enough to make her seem like a real woman? Bertrandon even gave this character a developed inner life.
Still, our author also hastened to point out that in one stretch of isolated Anatolian mountains, there was a tribe of thirty thousand or so women who dressed just like men and wielded swords like men and in times of war fought like men. See? The barren wastes don’t just have women, they have strong women.
Maybe Le voyage d’outremer just has a plot.
8. SHOW OFF YOUR WORLDBUILDING
… But sometimes a plot has to wait while an author waxes poetic on the things that really matter: “The goats [of Antioch] are, for the most part, white, and the handsomest I have ever seen, not having, like those of Syria, hanging ears; and their hair is soft, of some length and curling. Their sheep have thick and broad tails. [The people] also feed wild donkeys, which they tame: these much resemble stags in their hair, ears, and head, and have like them cloven feet… They are large, handsome, and go with other animals.”8
Because in-depth knowledge of livestock is exactly the information you need to survive your trek across the barren wastes.
You finally have your answer to the lingering question about Le voyage d’outremer itself. Bertrandon’s book is not an espionage report. It’s Twilight of the Crusades, Book Three: Blade of Turks.
But why shouldn’t Bertrandon have written a fantasy adventure? He took his trip in 1432, when crusade was Duke Philip’s dream, and gave whatever report he gave to Philip at the time. He wrote Le voyage d’outremer in the 1450s, when crusade was Philip’s fantasy. The duke’s crusading Oath of the Pheasant was just one in a long tradition of oaths sworn over birds—a long literary tradition, stretching back through generations of romances to early French legends of King Arthur and his knights. Philip in 1455 wanted a romance for an audience, and Bertrandon wrote exactly what 1455 Philip asked him to write.
And with Le voyage d’outremer, Bertrandon did indeed prove himself the best spy in the world (not to mention your best role model). By making himself the protagonist, Bertrandon focused his adventures of crossing the barren wastes of Sinai and Anatolia on one person, not on advice for an entire army. Even his exaggerations are useful. It’s always better to be overprepared than overwhelmed.
So, if you’ve got some barren wastes to cross, put down your sword and pick up a copy of Twilight of the Crusades, Book Four: Age of Goats.
7. Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, Le Voyage d’Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière, ed. C. H. Schefer (E. Leroux, 1892), 22.
8. Ibid., 85–86.
HAZARDS ALONG the WAY
WHEN a DRAGON ATTACKS the VILLAGE
St. George slew a dragon. Ho-hum.
St. George pacified a dragon by tying a piece of women’s clothing around its neck, and then slew the dragon. That’s better.
St. George saved a virgin from a dragon, pacified it by tying a piece of women’s clothing around its neck, and th
en slew the dragon. Now that—that’s medieval.
As medieval Christians told the story, St. George was traveling through Libya when he came across a city in mourning. A dragon had ravaged the city so badly and for so long that they had been forced to make a terrible bargain. When the dragon wanted, the town would choose a child or teenager by lottery and cast them outside the wall. A horrible death awaited the one in exchange for the temporary safety of all. And one day, the chosen one was the king’s daughter.
The king is a stand-in for the mythical Israelite king Jephthah, who had been similarly tricked into sacrificing his daughter. The dragon is a stand-in for Satan. But the story nevertheless contains a compelling lesson: child sacrifice is a really bad way of saving your village from a dragon. (Take a moment to appreciate that your parents obviously agreed.) The Middle Ages responded much less murderously and more productively to the challenge faced by the legend’s villagers. No matter how many times you’ve wished your village was dragon bait, you’re a hero now, and heroes save villages. Even though you are neither mythical nor a saint like George, you would do well to learn from the legend’s villagers how to handle the sudden appearance of a dragon in the sky.
How to Slay a Dragon Page 9