LECTURE OUTLINE FOR HISTORY 204

                                                                       Prof. Martha Carlin

                                                                       Week 14: Tuesday

                                               KNIGHTHOOD, WARFARE, AND REVOLT
 

Major tactics and technologies of medieval town and castle sieges included:

    Besiegers' tactics and technologies:                  Defenders' corresponding tactics and technologies:
    Blockade supplies to starve town                     (1) Good provisioning & food rationing; (2) counter-
        (very slow and expensive)                                     attack or outside help to break blockade
    Scaling ladders                                                (1) Moat; (2) man walls to repel scalers
    Siege towers                                                    (1) Moat; (2) fire arrows or other burning missiles
    Siege engines (especially trebuchets)               Destroy siege engines by sortie or by rival
                                                                                    stone-throwing engines
    Mines                                                              (1) Moat; (2) countermines
    Battering rams (against gates)                           (1) Moat; (2) drop rocks or boiling liquids on ram and
                                                                                    crew; (3) shoot crew with longbows or crossbows
    Cannon (beginning later 14 C.)                        Destroy cannon and kill gunners by sortie or by
                                                                                    rival cannon
    Negotiation and threats (e.g.,                            Counter-negotiation (e.g., "If no relief arrives within 40
           "Surrender now or face dreadful sack")            days, we will surrender peacefully")
 

1337-1453        Hundred Years' War between England and France:
    1346, 1356      English victories at Crécy and Poitiers (at latter, French king is captured)
    1347-1349       Black Death
    1358               Jacquerie rebellion (France)
    1381               Peasants' Revolt (England)
    1415                Henry V defeats French at Agincourt; marries French princess and is declared heir to
                                French crown
    1422                Charles VI of France and Henry V of England die, and war resumes
    1429-31        Joan of Arc, visionary peasant girl from Lorraine, turns tide of war to France and
                                gets Charles VII crowned; is captured by Burgundians, sold to French, tried at Rouen
                                (capital of English-held Normandy) by French churchmen, insists on authenticity of her
                                religious visions, and is burnt for heresy .  (Click here to read a letter sent by Joan to the English generals,
                                        ordering them to leave France or be slaughtered.  Click here for a contemporary sketch of Joan, made
                                         by a court clerk in the margins of the rolls of the Parlement of Paris.)
    1453              Fall of Constantinople to Ottoman Turks; end of Hundred Years' War 

1455-1485        War of the Roses in England (dynastic war between houses of Lancaster and York) ends
                                with victory at Bosworth field by Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond (becomes King
                                Henry VII, Lancastrian) over King Richard III (Yorkist)

Parliamentary developments:

    In England, Parliament is divided into two houses, Lords (peers and prelates) and Commons (shire knights
        and burgesses).  Lords develop into royal advisory body on policy and high court of appeal;
        Commons gain right to approve or veto new taxes and use fiscal control to gain broader legislative
        powers.

    In France, the Estates-General briefly secure shared power in 1357 from the Dauphin Charles (Great
        Ordinance), but this ends in 1358 with the suppression of the Jacquerie rebellion

Fifteenth century sees development of absolutist rulers throughout Europe:
    (Click here for maps of Europe c. 1400 and c. 1500)
    France (Louis XI, r. 1461-83)
    England (Henry VII, r. 1485-1509)
    Spain (Ferdinand of Aragon, r. 1479-1516 and Isabella of Castile, r. 1474-1504; conquer Granada
        in 1492, leading to expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain, and uniting of Spain)
    Papacy (Pope Martin V, r. 1417-31; restores papal power after Great Schism and Conciliar Movement)
    Russia (Ivan III, "the Great;" r. 1462-1505, repudiates Mongol authority, adopts Byzantine symbols
        of autocracy, calls himself "Czar" [Caesar] of the Russians and heir of Byzantium)

    Italy remains divided into 5 main powers: Kingdom of Naples, Papal States, Duchy of Milan, and
        Republics of Venice and Florence, all ruled by autocrats (or, in Venice, oligarchs)
    Holy Roman Empire remains fragmented into numerous principalities, free cities, etc., but in the 15th century
        the Hapsburg emperors, through judicious marriages, gain great wealth and territories, and thus power

Some aspects of developing absolutism:
    Legal concept, derived from Justinian's 6th-cent. Corpus Juris Civilis, that "the will of the prince
        has the force of law" (tacitly rejected in England since Magna Carta, 1215)
    Suppression or erosion of representative assemblies (rejected in England by development of strong
        Parliament)
    Development of standing army and professional administrative bureaucracy (especially staffed by lawyers)

    Suppression or erosion of aristocratic power, or of any other domestic rival power

 
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                Thursday:


Online readings:

   Jean Froissart, Chronicle: An English knight is felled by a Parisian butcher;  the Jacquerie in France,
        1358; and the origins of the English Peasants' Revolt, 1381

   Journal of a Bourgeois of Paris, 1405-1449: War, 1419; Joan of Arc, 1429-31

  The trial of Joan of Arc, 1431

  Battle injuries: skeletons from the battles of Visby, 1361 (mass grave, burial with mail coif, and skull), and Towton, 1461  (photo and drawing of skulls)