The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)

by T.H. White

The nobles of the inner circle on both sides were in a way traditionally more friendly with each other than with their own men. For them the numbers were necessary for the sake of the bag, and for scenic purposes. For them a good war had to be full of “arms, shoulders and heads flying about the field and blows ringing by the water and the wood.” But the arms, shoulders and heads would be those of villeins, and the blows which rang, without removing many limbs, would be exchanged by the iron nobility. Such, at any rate, was the idea of battle in Lot’s command. When sufficient kerns had been decapitated and sufficient rough handling had been dealt out to the English captains, Arthur would recognize the impossibility of further resistance. He would capitulate. Financial terms of peace would be agreed on—which would yield an excellent profit in ransoms—and all would be more or less as it had been before—except that the fiction of feudal overlordship would be abolished, which was a fiction in any case. Naturally a war of this sort was likely to be hedged with etiquette, just as foxhunting is hedged with it. It would begin at the advertised meet, weather permitting, and it would be conducted according to precedent. But Arthur had a different idea in his head. It did not seem to him to be sporting, after all, that eighty thousand humble men should be leu’d against each other while a fraction of their number, in carapaces like the skins of tanks, manœuvred for the sake of ransom. ...