Grief and wrath pervade too a Latin polemic called “Tragic Account of the Miserable State of the Realm of France” by an obscure Benedictine monk. Ashamed for once-proud France which let her King be captured “in the heart of the kingdom” and led without interference to captivity on foreign soil, he raised the crucial question of military discipline. “Where did you study [the art of war]? Who were your teachers? In what was your apprenticeship?” he asks the knights. “Was it while fighting under the banners of Venus, sucking sweetness like milk, abandoned to delights …” and so on in this vein
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Grief and wrath pervade too a Latin polemic called “Tragic Account of the Miserable State of the Realm of France” by an obscure Benedictine monk. Ashamed for once-proud France which let her King be captured “in the heart of the kingdom” and led without interference to captivity on foreign soil, he raised the crucial question of military discipline. “Where did you study [the art of war]? Who were your teachers? In what was your apprenticeship?” he asks the knights. “Was it while fighting under the banners of Venus, sucking sweetness like milk, abandoned to delights …” and so on in this vein until he suddenly concludes with the practical question, “Can the military art be learned in the games and hunts in which you pass your youth?”
