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

on foot to rescue Marmion reinforces the conjunction of practicality and chivalry in
the knight's approach to war.
The trappings and ceremonies of chivalry did, however, become more remote from
the reality of war during the late 14th and 15th centuries. Tournaments were no longer
training for war. Whilst they might still help to keep a man fit and healthy and active,
their increasing specialization and the changes in the methods of battle meant that the
joust was no longer relevant to the knight's behaviour on the field. Heraldry also
became less important. The increasing size of armies made it much more important to
show collective identity through national symbols, such as the cross of St George worn
by all English royal expeditions from Agincourt onwards. Displaying one's identity
and status was less likely to save your life. War had become more sanguinary, not just
because there were far more infantry, men uninterested in trying to extract ransom
from noble families. The Wars ot the Roses showed a dramatic change in temperament
from what had gone before. Captured noblemen were executed without a murmur of
protest, personal vendettas and revenge for past murders leading to yet more noble
blood being spilt. Ironically it was now a cry of 'spare the commons' that was most
likely to be heard across the field, from men whose grandfathers would not have
thought them worthy of a moment's notice.
By the 16th century the changes wrought on the battlefield meant that the notion
of chivalry of the 13th century, the fusion of the warrior, courtier and Christian, had
all but disappeared. The crusading zeal and the idea of the Christian knight had
vanished for the most part, although not entirely, buried by the victory of the
Ottomans at Nicopolis in 1396. As the aristocratic warrior elite transformed itself into
a professional officer class the drives for individual martial glory were downplayed,
whilst that ol honourable conduct, duty and loyalty took centre stage. The concepts
of courtliness and fine manners were claimed by the gentry who asserted a nobility
gained through service. They became something quaint and foolish. They were
lampooned by the likes of Cervantes, whose Don Quixote, having read too much
medieval romance, imagines himself the questing hero performing deeds for his lady,
but is thought by all around him to be foolish and mad.
By the end of the 16th century the knight as we have been looking at him had
become a.thing of the past. His social dominance had been subsumed within the gentry
of courtiers, functionaries and landowners, his traditional battlefield role had
disappeared beneath a forest of pikes and cloud of gun-smoke. He has never been
forgotten. All around us, in the arms and armour displayed in museums, in the funeral
monuments and coats of arms in countless churches and cathedrals, in the manuscript
illuminations and the stories and tales of great battles and heroic deeds, the colour
and pageantry of the world of the warrior still exerts its fascination.
THE DEATH OF KNIGHTHOOD? -3*-
Opposite: Gradually
armour became less
about protection and more
about display, as this piece
of 16th-century parade
armour demonstrates.
(Bridgeman Art Library)
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