a presence, all-around, than Philip II. Had Richard lived another decade, the two kings would have continued to fight, and the chances are good that Richard would have been victorious. But he died from a crossbow shot in 1199, while Philip lived another twenty years. And during that score of years, Philip was able to accomplish much of what had previously been denied him.
Who was King John?
John (ruled 1199–1216) was the youngest son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and no one—except perhaps his father—ever suspected he would become king. John had three elder brothers, but two of them died and the third was a high churchman: the throne, therefore, went to John after Richard’s death.
Was it confusing to the people at the time that England and France seemed to have been joined at the hip?
To them it made sense. A peasant owed allegiance to the local strongman, who owed his allegiance to the local lord. If that lord declared his allegiance to England, for example, then so did all of the people in the village, even the county. True nationalism had not yet developed, and local, provincial loyalties were far stronger than they are today.
John has a bad press—almost everyone agrees on this—but he does seem to have been something of a coward. Perhaps it was the overwhelming presence of his brother Richard that made this so; in any case, John cut a poor figure, both on the battlefield and off. Philip II, meanwhile, had had plenty of time to develop his strategy, which was to dispossess the English king of his domains in present-day France.
How badly did King John stumble?
He stumbled to the point that Pope Innocent III placed all England under interdict, declaring that none of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic faith could be performed in that country. This was enough to bring King John to heel, and in 1206 he signed a remarkable document—which still exists—declaring that he was a vassal of the Pope and owed him political, as well as spiritual, allegiance.
John recovered from this disaster, only to stumble into military action against the French. John believed he would prevail because he had enlisted the aid of many German knights and nobles, but when Philip won the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, the poverty of John’s cause became extreme. He evacuated his men from nearly all their posts in France and practically signed away both Normandy and Aquitaine. His final humiliation was yet to come, however.
How important was the Magna Carta (“Great Charter”)?
The Middle Ages was an era practically teeming with charters. Towns chartered their independence from local lords, and villages established charters—written agree ments—with their local knights. Many of these charters still survive and can be seen in major institutions such as the British Library and British Museum, but the most famous of all, beyond doubt, was the Great Charter of 1215.
Under its provisions, King John agreed that certain rights and privileges were beyond his royal power to remove. He could not, for example, seize a nobleman or distress him without the agreement of a council of the barons, and he could not have a man locked up in prison without allowing some sort of trial. To be sure, there were social gradients built into the Great Charter. Peasants had lesser rights; serfs had almost none. But the principle, the very idea that some people had specific rights which could not be removed, was little short of revolutionary. By forcing King John to sign this document, the barons, in 1215, asserted a powerful new trend, one that eventually led in the direction of greater personal liberties.
The first page of the Magna Carta. Signed by King John, this 1215 charter is one of the most important documents in the history of legal rights. It acknowledged that citizens have certain rights that cannot be taken away, even by a king.
What is the difference between a baron, a knight, and a lord?
In the High Middle Ages, there were many knights and rather few barons (who might also be called “lord”). The barons usually came from longer lineages and could claim descent from the first knights of a given area. In 1215, the leading barons of England declared war on King John. They never aimed to overthrow him or to take him prisoner, but they asserted their right to defend their baronial privileges, which included near-absolute sovereignty over their lands. King John did not fight the barons—he knew that he would lose—but he came to an agreement with them in June 1215.
When did the military revolution take place?
Between about 1150 and 1300, a quiet and subtle economic revolution took place, which consequently gave birth to a military one. In that century and a half, the lower-income folk of medieval society began an economic rise that established not what we would call a middle class but rather what we would label a significant, effective working class. Men who previously worked as day laborers now had regular employment, and numerous guilds were established to protect the rights of artisans. As a result, many truly lower-class people moved up to become wealthier and more respectable. It was these people, engaged in a social and economic revolution, who brought about a military one.
Not surprisingly, the countries that enjoyed the most success during this period, roughly 1300–1425, were those that emphasized upward mobility. Little Switzerland exerted a power beyond its borders, thanks to its mercenary soldiers, and medium-sized Scotland, which had so long been bullied by its large southern neighbor, won its independence. Then, too, the Flemings of present-day Belgium gained quasi-independence from both the Holy Roman Empire and the French monarchy. And most of this was accomplished by spears, rather than swords, and by common soldiers in the ranks rather than glittering knights on horseback.
What was the first battle that indicated the success of the new techniques?
The Flemings revolted against French rule at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and a major army of French knights rode north to punish the rebels. At the Battle of Courtrai in 1302, the Flemings met the French with infantry massed in blocks, carrying pikes. Some of the pikes were metal, but far more were of wood, spliced and then hacked from trees. The French made a typical, medieval attack, expecting to rout the rebels, and instead were routed themselves, both by the speed and ferocity of the Flemish infantry. Had the French possessed archers, they might have succeeded; instead, they sustained a bloody defeat. France did make an adjustment, having some of its men train with the Genoese crossbow, but even this weapon was “heavy” and slow: it released perhaps one round every two minutes. What they really needed was something “lighter” and faster, and they did not find it for a long time to come.
Where was the second place the military revolution showed itself?
The people of that time, of course, did not call it a revolution. They were interested in survival and in fending off the attacks of their foes. And the Scots, who had a long history of military failure, were among the first to seize on the new opportunities.
Scotland was a kingdom, but it had been subject to England for almost half a century. English suzerainty had been established by winning over many of the Scottish nobles, men who owned land on both sides of the border. England’s King Edward I (ruled 1272–1307)—sometimes known as “Longshanks”—was the architect of the English policy, which resulted in Scotland being a vassal country. Edward I pressed his gains so strongly, however, that a backlash resulted, leading to the Anglo-Scottish Wars.
Who was William Wallace? Was he as important as he is portrayed in the movie Braveheart?
Released to the cinema in 1995, Braveheart was an outstanding film in terms of dramatic tension; it also contains some of the best scenes of medieval warfare ever filmed. William Wallace was indeed real, but his origins were not as humble as those shown in the film. He was a “hedge knight,” meaning he possessed little land, and he was outraged over the brutal means England used to subdue Scotland. Wallace, therefore, started the rebellion that escalated in the middle part of the last decade of the thirteenth century.
What Braveheart shows very well is the discrepancy between