Purpose and Range of This Book

FRENCH HISTORY IN the period under consideration can often appear totally shapeless, seeming to be “just one damned thing after another.” This is particularly true of its military history, in which major events and dramatic changes are rare. Additionally, of course, those who composed our sources had their own agendas, and what they tell us reflects their priorities. To understand the coherence of French military history we must always remember that war reflects the nature of the societies that wage it. At heart, this was an agrarian society that marched to the rhythm of the agriculture year. The elite seized most of the difference between what peasants produced and what they needed to live on. Hence there could be no standing army of any size, and this relative poverty meant that any large army that was gathered could not stay together for very long.

Essentially, the subject of our discussion is the inheritance of Charles the Bald (843– 877), the lands of the West Franks. His death was followed by a sequence of very short-lived descendants, and then a protracted period in which the territory was torn between the rival royal houses of the Carolingians and the Capetians. Yet, by the later thirteenth century, France was the dominant kingdom in Europe, and a branch of its Capetian ruling house governed the wealthy kingdom of Sicily. Its influence extended right across the Mediterranean to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was protected by a French contribution to the garrison. A series of French popes ruled the Church, notably Martin IV (1281– 1285). By the end of the century royal power had totally eclipsed that of the great nobility and a process of royal centralization through a loyal bureaucracy was well under way.

This was an extraordinary rise, all the more so in that the inheritance of Charles the Bald was bitterly contested internally and, for a time, subject to violent external attack. Yet this entity held together, although Lorraine drifted to the empire and outposts in the Pyrenees to Spanish Christian kingdoms. These were only marginal losses, however, despite the fact that there was no obvious principle of unity.