Literary Analysis - LanguageArts-NHS

Reading for InformationHISTORICAL ACCOUNT In A Distant Mirror, the historian Barbara Tuchman offers aglimpse of the actual conditions medieval knights faced in battle.fromA Distant Mirror:The Calamitous 14th CenturyBarbara TuchmanTo fight on horseback or foot wearing55 pounds of plate armor, to crashin collision with an opponent at fullgallop while holding horizontal aneighteen-foot lance half the length ofan average telephone pole, to give andreceive blows with sword or battle-axthat could cleave a skull or slice off alimb at a stroke, to spend half of lifein the saddle through all weathers andfor days at a time, was not a weakling’swork. Hardship and fear were part ofit. “Knights who are at the wars . . . areforever swallowing their fear,” wrotethe companion and biographer of DonPero Niño, the “Unconquered Knight”of the late 14th century. “They exposethemselves to every peril; they giveup their bodies to the adventure of lifein death. Moldy bread or biscuit, meatcooked or uncooked; today enough to eatThe knight (1400s). Livre des eschecs moralisés, translated byJean Ferron from the Latin of Jacques de Cessoles. MS 3066,fol. 21. Bibliothèque Municipale, Rouen, France.Photo © Giraudon/Art Resource, New York.and tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or a butt, 1 bad quarters, theshelter of a tent or branches, a bad bed, poor sleep with their armor still on their backs,burdened with iron, the enemy an arrow-shot off. ‘Ware! Who goes there? To arms! Toarms!’ With the first drowsiness, an alarm; at dawn, the trumpet. ‘To horse! To horse!Muster! Muster!’ As lookouts, as sentinels, keeping watch by day and by night, fightingwithout cover, as foragers, as scouts, guard after guard, duty after duty. ‘Here they come!Here! They are so many—No, not as many as that—This way—that—Come this side—Press them there—News! News! They come back hurt, they have prisoners—no, theybring none back. Let us go! Let us go! Give no ground! On!’ Such is their calling.”1. butt: water cask.reading for information 1027