Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

It is the relationship between the knight and his lord that acts as the catalyst for the
epic tales. Roland's death was brought about by the treachery of his uncle Ganelon,
whom Charlemagne had pulled apart by horses for the deed. Roland's companion
Oliver stayed beside his friend to the death. According to Geoffrey de Villehardouin,
Louis de Bethune refused to leave the field in spite ol his wounds, with the words
'God lorbid that I should ever be reproached with flying from the field and abandoning
my emperor.' A most poignant example of loyalty to one's lord occurred at Crecy. King
John of Bohemia, allied to the King of France, served with him at the battle. Although
he had lost his sight some ten years earlier he insisted on taking the field and had his
retinue lead him into the thick ol the battle that he might strike a blow with his sword.
In order that they would not be separated from him in the press his 12 companions tied
all of their reins together. During the battle all were slain, and Froissart tells us that
the next day they were found in the place about the king, and all their horses tied
each to other'.
Loyalty and duty was a two-way thing. Just as the knight had a duty to serve his
lord, so his lord had a duty to defend and support his knights both on the field and in
general. A lord was expected to be generous to his followers, rewarding their loyalty
with gilts. A lord's failure to protect or provide for his knights was as great a cause of
shame as a vassal failing his lord. In the 12th-century epic tales Rao ill de Cambraiand
Girart of Vienne, a perception ol tailure led to resistance, rebellion, war and suffering.
In Raoul it was King Louis' deprivation of the eponymous anti-hero's rightful
inheritance and his subsequent failure to grant him a promised fief, that forced Raoul
to undertake armed rebellion. In Girart of Vienne it was Charlemagne's refusal to
punish his queen for shaming his man Girart in front of the court that breached the
ties between vassal and lord and triggered the seven-year siege of Vienne. It was not
just in the romances that such splits took place. Before the battle of Evesham both
sides pronounced the diffidatio, the formal renunciation of the tie of lord and vassal.
The warrior ethos can be seen in the earliest chivalric writings and behaviour, and
formed a central core around which other strands developed. The origins of these
martial values tend to be ascribed to the warrior culture of the Germanic tribes who
settled in Western Europe at the collapse of the Roman Empire, and it is true that
these same virtues are lauded in the surviving literature ol Saxon England, Viking
Scandinavia and Carohngian France. The Song of Ataldon, a poem describing the battle
between the tenth-century Ealdorman ol Essex Brihtnoth and a Viking army,
describes the lord as a 'giver of rings' and 'the people's chief, Aetheldred's earl'. It ends
with Brihtnoth's death, after which his warriors, fighting to the death, 'all desired one
of two things, to lose their lives or to avenge the one they loved'. Beowulf, of a similar
date and origin, has similar themes of prowess, loyalty and service. These similarities
CHIVALRY: THE KNIGHTLY CODE -