A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

In France, the failure to conclude peace and the renewal of the King’s madness—intensifying the struggle between Burgundy and Orléans—weakened the impetus for the Way of Force. The French were not prepared to move into Italy until they had settled with England. Indeed, when the English got wind of French plans, they conveyed a warning that they would break the truce if France took up arms against the Roman Pope. Mistrusting Gloucester’s war party, the French sent heralds through the realm to order strengthening of defenses and repair of crumbling walls. In a renewed effort to train archers, an ordinance was issued prohibiting games. Tennis, which the common people were adopting in imitation of the nobles, and soules, a form of field hockey popular with the bourgeois and seldom played without broken bones, as well as dice and cards, were banned in the hope of encouraging practice in archery and the crossbow. This was the same effort Charles V had made in 1368 and it shows that the rulers were acutely conscious of the failure of French archery. Skills were not lacking; the trouble was that French tactics did not allow archery an essential place. Combined action of archers and knights was not adopted; crossbow companies were hired and barely used. The reason was clearly a mixture of contempt for the commoner and fear for chivalry’s primacy in battle. By 1393 the added fear of insurrection caused the new ordinance to have a short life. After a period during which practice with...