Combat of the Thirty
Combat of the Thirty | |||||||
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Part of the Penguilly l'Haridon: Le Combat des Trente | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
House of Blois, Brittany Kingdom of France |
House of Montfort, Brittany Kingdom of England | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Jean de Beaumanoir | Robert Bemborough † | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
30 knights and squires | 30 knights and squires | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
2 dead[1] | 9 dead[1] | ||||||
The Combat of the Thirty (
After a hard-fought battle, the Franco-Breton Blois faction emerged victorious. The combat was later celebrated by medieval chroniclers and balladeers as a noble display of the ideals of chivalry. In the words of Jean Froissart, the warriors "held themselves as valiantly on both sides as if they had been all Rolands and Olivers".[3]
Background and cause
The Breton War of Succession was a struggle between the House of Montfort and House of Blois for control of the Duchy of Brittany. It came to be absorbed into the larger Hundred Years' War between France and England, with England supporting the Montforts and France supporting the Blois family. At the time of the tournament, the war had become stalemated, with each faction controlling strongholds at different locations within Brittany, but occasionally making sorties into one another's territory.[citation needed]
Robert Bemborough, a knight leading the Montfortist faction which controlled Ploërmel, was challenged to single combat by Jean de Beaumanoir, the captain of nearby Josselin, controlled by the Blois faction. According to the chronicler Froissart, this purely personal duel between the two leaders became a larger struggle when Bemborough suggested a tournament between twenty or thirty knights on each side, a proposal that was enthusiastically accepted by de Beaumanoir.[citation needed]
The motivation for the tournament is unclear. The earliest written sources present it as a purely chivalric exercise, undertaken to honour the ladies for whom the knights were fighting: referring to
However, popular ballads portrayed the cause differently. The earliest of these, written by an unknown local supporter of the Blois faction, depicts Bemborough and his knights as ruthless despoilers of the local population, who appealed to Beaumanoir for help. Beaumanoir is depicted as a hero coming to the aid of the defenceless people.[4] The poet also portrays Beaumanoir as a model of Christian piety, who puts his faith in God, in contrast to Bemborough who relies on the Prophesies of Merlin.[5] This version was standardised in Pierre Le Baud's History of the Bretons, written a century later, in which Bemborough's alleged cruelty is explained by his desire to avenge the death of Thomas Dagworth.[citation needed]
Whatever the cause, the fight was arranged in the form of an emprise—an arranged pas d'armes—which took place at an area known as the chêne de Mi-Voie (the Halfway Oak) between Ploërmel and Josselin, between picked combatants. It was organised in the manner of a tournament, with refreshments on hand and a large gathering of spectators. Bemborough is supposed to have said,
And let us right there try ourselves and do so much that people will speak of it in future times in halls, in palaces, in public places and elsewhere throughout the world.
The words are recorded by Froissart:[6] "the saying may not be authentic", Johan Huizinga remarks, "but it teaches us what Froissart thought".[7]
Beaumanoir commanded thirty
Battle
The battle, fought with
According to Froissart, the battle was fought with great gallantry on both sides. After several hours of fighting there were four dead on the French side and two on the English side. Both sides were exhausted and agreed to a break for refreshments and bandaging of injuries. After the battle resumed, the English leader Bemborough was wounded and then killed, apparently by du Bois. At this point the English faction formed a tight defensive body, which the French repeatedly attacked. A German soldier called Croquart is said to have displayed the greatest prowess in rallying the Anglo-Breton defence.[10]
In the end, the victory was decided by Guillaume de Montauban, a squire who mounted his horse and rode into the English line, breaking it. He overthrew seven of the English champions, the rest being forced to surrender. All the combatants on either side were either dead or seriously wounded, with nine on the English side slain.
Reputation
While the combat did not have any effect on the outcome of the Breton war of succession, it was considered by contemporaries to be an example of the finest
According to historian Steven Muhlberger, this chivalric version concentrates on "how the deed was done and not on who won. The willingness of all concerned to agree to rules and to actually observe them, to fight their best and not to run when injured or in danger of capture are the focus – and both sides are shown as equally worthy in that respect."[12]
Later, the combat came to be seen in very different terms, influenced by the most famous of the contemporary popular ballads on the topic. In this version the English knights are villains, and the Blois faction are loyal and worthy local warriors. The balladeer lists each fighter on both sides (though garbles several English names). He situates the Franco-Breton Blois faction as all local gentry and aristocracy performing their proper social duty to protect the people, thus justifying, Muhlberger writes, "the privileges that nobles held as brave defenders of the weak". The Montfortists are a mélange of foreign mercenaries and brigands who "torment the poor people".
Though the combat had much less significance for the English, the fact that it was won because one combatant mounted a horse to break the Anglo-Breton line was later portrayed as evidence that the Franco-Bretons cheated. Edward Smedley's History of France (1836) states that the manoeuvre "wears some appearance of treachery".[14] This version was fictionalised by Arthur Conan Doyle in his historical novel Sir Nigel, in which Bemborough (called Richard of Bambro' in the novel) accepts the rules of the challenge in a chivalric spirit, but the Franco-Bretons win only because Montauban, portrayed as Beaumanoir's squire, mounts his horse, when the conflict was supposed to be on foot, and rides upon the English, trampling them.[citation needed]
A free English translation in verse of the ballad was written by
Combatants
These are the names of the knights, as listed in Ainsworth's translation of the poem, although there are actually 31 listed for the English side.[16]
Franco-Breton force
Squires
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Anglo-Breton force
Squires and men-at-arms
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† indicates that the combatant was killed. The English side lost nine killed in total and the remainder captured. The Franco-Breton side lost at least three and probably more. A number of them were captured, taken to Josselin and executed.
See also
- Battle of the North Inch, similar battle in Scotland, 1396
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0785835530.
- ^ Combat of the Thirty (1351) in: John A. Wagner. Encyclopedia of the Hundred Years War. – Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006, p. 103.
- ^ Jean Froissart's Chronicles Amiens ms. version.
- ^ a b c d e Henry Raymond Brush, "La Bataille de Trente Anglois et de Trente Bretons", Modern Philology, Vol. 9, No. 4, Apr. 1912, pp. 511–544
- ^ Pierre d'Hozier (ed), Pierre Le Baud, Histoire de Bretagne, avec les chroniques des maisons de Vitré et de Laval, Gervaise Alliot, 1638, p.310.
- ^ Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce, c. iv. pp. 45 and 110ff, and pp. 338–340.
- ^ Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919) 1924:59.
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Beaumanoir". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Les drapeaux Bretons de 1188 a nos jours, illuminations decorating Compilations de Chronicques et Ystores des Bretons
- ^ Arthur de la Borderie, Historie de Bretagne, Paris, Alphonse Picard, vol. 3, pp. 520–529.
- ^ Jules Guiffrey. Inventaire des tapisseries du roi Charles VI vendues par les Anglais en 1422, Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes 1887, tome 48. p. 92.
- ^ a b Muhlberger, Steven, "The Combat of the Thirty against Thirty", in L. J. Andrew Villalon, Donald J. Kagay (eds), The Hundred Years War (Part II): Different Vistas , Brill, 2008 pp. 289–294.
- ^ French: "Ici le 27 mars 1351, trente Bretons, dont les noms suivent, combattirent pour la défense du pauvre, du laboureur, de l'artisan et vainquirent des étrangers, que des funestes divisions avaient amenés sur le sol de la patrie. Postérité bretonne imitez vos ancêtres."
- ^ Edward Smedley's History of France, Volume One, Baldwin and Craddock, 1836, p. 194.
- ^ Tom Taylor, Ballads and Songs of Brittany, Macmillain, 1865, p. 125.
- ^ Muhlberger, Steven. "Deeds of Arms: Ainsworth's Translation of the Verse Account of the Combat of the Thirty". Nipissing University. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
Literature
- A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman (1978)
- Le Poème du combat des Trente, in the Panthéon litteraire;
- H.R. Brush, ed., "La Bataille de trente Anglois et de trente Bretons," Modern Philology, 9 (1911–12): 511–44; 10 (1912–13): 82–136.
- "The combat of the thirty. From an old Breton lay of the fourteenth century". Translated by English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. In: Browne, H. Knight; Cruikshank, G.; Smith, A.; Ainsworth, W. Harrison; Dickens, C. (18371868) (1859). Bentley's Miscellany Volume XLV. London: Richard Bentley. pp. 5–10, 445–459.
- Steven Muhlberger (tr. and ed.), The Combat of the Thirty, Deeds of Arms Series, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Freelance Academy Press, 2012).
- Steven Muhlberger, Deeds of Arms: Formal combats in the late fourteenth century, (Highland Village, TX: The Chivalry Bookshelf, 2005), 76–120.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Sébastien Nadot, Rompez les lances ! Chevaliers et tournois au Moyen Age, Paris, ed. Autrement, 2010. (Couch your lances ! Knights and tournaments in the Middle Ages...)
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Nigel.