A Fine and Terrible Mystery - Episode 7: Special Forces

This is episode 7 in a series of posts researching the mystery of the dramatic life of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Mort d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

 

Mark Bowden’s 1999 important and tragic history Black Hawk Down snapshots the US military at a critical period of transition.  He implicitly captures the rise of the small, modern special forces unit, the practical necessity such units meet, and  the stress they placed on larger, conventionally organized parts of the military and their culture at the time.  Within such units, rank and chain of command were less important and relevant than the flexible, varying organization and strategy such units adopted internally to accomplish their difficult missions.  Outwardly, their sometime disregard for military rules of dress and grooming was a source of stress for officers working to maintain traditional standards.

The 15^th century was also a period of military transition.  At Agincourt in 1415, Henry V’s army consisted of 5,000 archers and 900 men-at-arms of which as many as 10% were knights.   Later, in 1439, the Earl of Huntingdon’s expedition to recover Gascony, which Sir Thomas Malory could have participated in, consisted of 2,009 archers, 300 men-at-arms of which 2 were knight bannerets and 6 were knights, roughly 3%.  Since Crecy the percentages of knights and men-at-arms generally in English armies was declining.  There were multiple reasons.  Knights were required to maintain at least £40 per year of property income and to be equivalently compensated for military service whereas an esquire was compensated at £18 for performing the same tactical role.  And there may have been a cultural issue as well.  Beverly Kennedy in Knighthood in the Morte Darthur contrasts two views of late medieval knighthood.  In Libro del orden de caballeria, Ramon Lull sees knighthood as a divinely ordained office as old as human society itself with independent social  obligations for rule and judgment as well as the military obligations.  In contrast, Christine de Pizan provides very practical advice in Livre des fais d’armes et de la chevalerie for participating as a member of a contemporary medieval force and filling a functional military role.  Knights were complicated with ambiguous, changing moral and ethical responsibilities.  Knights may have had unique value as officers but esquires were probably more adaptable and easier to command.

This is important context for Sir Thomas Malory.  His father had acquired a distraint of knighthood to relieve himself of the obligation.  In contrast, Sir Thomas’ pursuit of knighthood, which he finally achieved sometime around the age of 39, was not a social obligation, nor was it implicit for someone in his social situation but it was an apparent life goal.  There are many possible motivations, including the pursuit of status, but, for what it’s worth, status alone is rarely the motivation for knighthood in Le Mort d’Arthur:  more often it is a platform for service and accomplishment, which Lull would have fully understood.  This is clear, but circumstantial evidence of Malory possessing a personal sense of noblesse oblige.

William Caxton, who published Le Mort d’Arthur also published Ramon Lull and Christine de Pizan, chivalric luminaries.  He was very careful to publish authors of whose audience he was confident.  Caxton’s choice to include Malory in his select company may also be circumstantial evidence alluding to his character.

 
Previously, I’ve mentioned Eric Jager’s The Last Duel, the story of the last judicial combat to the death in France.  Interestingly, it was between a knight and man-at-arms and the issue under such terrible arbitration was the rape of a woman.  The coincidences and social parallels and contrasts with the accusations against Malory deserve more time and I’ll come back to it in future posts.

Episode 8 is here

A Fine and Terrible Mystery - Episode 4: Absurdity

I’m staring out at bare hills that should be deep in snow and recalling another barren year when I started graduate school.  An informal rite of passage for new maths students was playing what may have been the first computer adventure game  through to the end.  It was only and wonderfully in text and began with a few lines describing an innocuous tunnel in an empty forest.  Progress was easy enough at first then I encountered a dragon in a great room of the cave and needed the wit to use the unexpected tactic of releasing a small caged bird to scare it off.  Later, I encountered a maze in which every room had the same simple description:  “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”  The key to mapping the maze, indeed for identifying where you were, was to drop one of the things you were carrying so that you’d recognize the place when you came there again.  There’s a metaphor worthy of exploration.

The game cost me several nearly sleepless nights and I loved it and being part of the partly secret, informally elite society that had been carried out of the cave by friendly elves.  There was one particular moment late one night when I realized how vast and pleasantly difficult the game was.

Studying Malory’s life and reading Le Morte d’Arthur gives me the same cheery feeling.

On the biographical front, there’s a language issue I want to mention.  The word “siege” had two commonly used meanings in the 15^th century.  It could mean a military siege as it does today.  But it also could mean simply a central place or even a seat.  Malory uses that meaning himself; remember the “Siege Perilous,” the dangerous chair at the Round Table?  The consequence for Malory’s biography is that Dugdale’s reference used to place his birth in 1401 may not be as precise as it first appears.  At the worst it means he would have served under Warwick at Calais sometime before 1422, the year Henry V died.  It’s another albeit minor ambiguity to keep in mind.

There’s no direct evidence telling us how Malory was raised.  Both Field and Hardyment discuss the possible importance of his uncles, which wouldn’t have been unusual at the time but which is necessarily no more than speculation.  Hardyment finds persuasive Beverly Kennedy’s premise in Knighthood in the Morte Darthur that Malory’s book presents three paradigms of knighthood, heroic, world-wise and spiritual, and that they may have been embodied for Malory by three uncles.  I find the idea appealing given my own early life.  It’s another path in the maze I’ll want to follow as far as it goes.

In Le Morte d’Arthur itself I’ve just finished reading and rereading and rereading the tale of Balin and Balan (Book 2, chapters I through IX).   Arthur calls all his knights together at Camelot and while they’re together a richly dressed “damosel” arrives.  She throws back her furred cloak revealing she has been girt with a sword by enchantment from which she wishes to be freed.    It doth her “great sorrow and cumbrance.”  I’ll bet, especially when changing clothes.  Not surprisingly, it can only be removed by a “passing good (knight) of his hands and of his deeds, and without villainy or treachery, and without treason.”  What follows, however, is particularly interesting.  Arthur himself, tries first, acknowledging the probability of his own failure so that his knights won’t be ashamed to try.  And he does fail and thus chooses to reveal his moral imperfection.  It’s a surprising and dangerous strategy for a medieval king, especially one who just faced a terrible insurrection.

Just before he had been seduced unknowingly by Morgause his half-sister and had ordered the death of all the infants born on May 1^st in an attempt to kill the fruit of that union, Mordred.   Is Arthur a king who is innately good and loving as in T. H. White’s interpretation or someone who comes to goodness later but necessarily suffers for the evil he did when he was young?   Arthur’s personal moral journey with its political dimension deserves more attention than it often receives overshadowed as it is by Lancelot.

Fortunately, there is someone who can free the girl from her cumbersome burden:  the impoverished knight Balin.  He draws the sword, freeing her, but then refuses to give it back.  She then prophesies that as a result he will slay “the man that ye most love in the world, and the sword shall be (his) destruction.”  And so it proves.  Two elements of the story of Balin’s tragic quest which leads to a picturesque and bloody fatal joust with his brother are worth thinking about.  First, there is an element of the tragic in Balin, because he is a knight, the best that Arthur has at the time,  he must accept the quest of the hart and the brachet which comes as a result of his refusing to give up the sword which in turn gives him his identity as “The Knight with Two Swords.”  Second, absurdity, irony and destiny all play roles and, as such create a fabric upon which the future quest stories are told.  It’s almost palpable, like the linen background supporting the scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Absurdity in Malory is easily and often parodied, perhaps never better than by Python (M).  Nevertheless, it deserves to be seen in a serious and tragic light, too.  It’s not hard to imagine that a world view rich in the absurd resonated with those who lived in the 15^th century.

As I read the battle of Balin and Balan, with both knights suitably surcoated and comparisoned in red, I couldn’t help but think of the battle in Eric Jager’s visceral history of the last judicial joust in France, The Last Duel, and how witnessing such terrible combat really was.  Not so strangely, I also recalled that Malory was T. E. Lawrence’s constant companion in the desert during World War I.

Episode 5 is here