The Historical Context of the Longsword, Part I: The Hundred Years' War

None of us need to be told that HEMA stands for “historical European martial arts”. We rightly understand that the historical part of that typically refers to the long-ago nature of the martial arts we study and the weapons used in their proper historical context. Nothing earth-shattering in this.

However, we must keep in mind that what we do in the modern era is essentially take the weapons out of their historical context and use them here, in the 21^st century, devoid of the proper time-space to fully understand them. No item, no tool -- for indeed weapons are tools -- is ever created in a vacuum, utterly separated from the time and place in which it is used. It means something to the people of that time, something more than just it as a weapon, an object, a tool unto itself. Add to it a specific style of using a weapon, and the historical context becomes even more important. 

Here is an easy to understand example from a not-so-distant time ago: The Walkman became extremely popular in the 1980s because it allowed you to conveniently move about while still listening to your own music. This was surprisingly revolutionary for the time because up until then you had to listen to your own music at home or in your car, listen to whatever was playing wherever you were, or carry a portable stereo with you. With the Walkman, you could lose yourself in your own music, crank it as loud as you wanted, and essentially dissociate for a time from the world around you. You could get lost in technology and be alone with what’s yours, even in a teeming city.

Sound familiar? What is now commonplace had meaning in the time-space from which it came. You could use an old pair of headphones from a Walkman now if you really wanted, but removed from its proper historical context your reaction would most likely be “meh,” especially because this is hardly revolutionary anymore. It just wouldn’t really make sense in this time-space.

The weapons we study are like that, removed from their proper historical setting. To better understand the weapons themselves and the systems that developed to use them you need to see them as part of their own historical setting. So today I set out to explain, in a multi-post blog entry, some of the historical context for one of HEMA’s most popular weapons, the Longsword. 

To put the Longsword into its own proper historical setting we first need to know what was the time frame about which we are talking. There is, as always, debate and disagreement on that, based in part on when the first treatises are believed to have been written. The typical early date given to the regular use of the Longsword is around 1350, which is also the time frame Johannes Liechtenauer was believed to have lived. (Of note, however, the Nuremberg Hausbuch, which is sometimes dated to have been written around 1390, notes that what we now call the Liechtenauer tradition was not invented by him but rather “developed some hundred years ago,” which suggests the Longsword tradition in Germany was developing since the late 1200s. Anecdotal, but interesting)

All retroactive dating is only ever an educated guess, so to set a proper historical setting let’s use the date of 1350 as a convenient point to say the Longsword was in common and regular use. Having established this date, we can now get into the first major historical context we need to grasp to understand the Longsword and its systems better: The Hundred Years’ War.

As should be obvious, any armed conflict that lasts for over a hundred years is complex and convoluted, and The Hundred Years' War is no exception. Its causes are many and intertwined, with periods of official treaties and marauding mercenary armies that complicate the picture quite a bit more. Throw in a few civil wars, shifting alliances, and even a few proxy wars in this and it all starts to look entirely more modern than Medieval in nature! So for our purposes now I'm not going to dig into extreme detail of the war here, I'm just going to provide enough information that you will better be able to understand the major martial event going on at the time the Longsword systems were being perfected.

And please be aware, this was the major military event going on at this time, so all things martial were tied to it in some way, even if only peripherally. Even though Europe is a large place and The Hundred Years' War was fought primarily in France, there is no other military event of great note during this time period. After all, while most people have at least heard of The Hundred Years' War, how many people are casually familiar with the Galicia-Volhynia Wars, the Thuringian Counts' War, the war of the Two Peters, or the Second War of the Rugen Succession? Not many, yet all of these other much smaller conflicts happened during the same period.

We cannot overemphasize the effects of this war on the psyche and paradigm of the people from this time period. It was as traumatic to them as was World Wars I and II to later generations, and as pervasive in their everyday thinking as the Cold War to our more recent ones. It was forefront in the mind of those warriors developing the system of and wielding Longswords, make no mistake.

There were several issues working together that dragged England and France into war, like disparate threads weaving together to make a funeral shroud. One primary cause was England's desire to protect and preserve Flanders due to that county's massive importance to its economic power. Flanders had grown to be the industrial center of northern Europe and had become extremely wealthy through its cloth manufacture, much of which was dependent upon England for wool.

While Flanders imported fine fleece from England, England depended upon this trade for its foreign exchange. After the Norman invasion of 1066 and the ongoing supplanting of Saxon ways by Norman ones, the upper-class English had adopted Norman fashions and switched from beer to wine. The problem was that England could not grow grapes to produce the wine that many of the English now favored and had to import it. A triangular trade arose in which English fleece was exchanged for Flemish cloth, which was then taken to southern France and exchanged for wine.

England, therefore, saw Flanders as vital to its overall economic well being -- much like the United States sees the Middle East in the same light because of the need for oil. But the counts of Flanders had been vassals of the king of France, and the French tried to regain control of the region in order to control its wealth. The English could not permit this since it would mean the French monarch would control their main source of foreign exchange.

But while the need to maintain economic power was a driving factor, perhaps the most important was the desire for royals to claim what was believed to be theirs. Remember that, while we now see England and France as two very different nations, at the time those distinctions were unclear because of the Norman invasion. A great many nobles held lands and titles on both sides of the Channel, including the kings of England, and many English knights and nobility saw themselves as primarily French -- or, more accurately, Norman.

This all came to a head in 1328, when the last son of King Philip IV died, and the direct male line of the Capetian dynasty ended after almost 350 years. Philip had had a daughter, Isabelle, who had married King Edward II of England, and King Edward III was their son (anyone who has seen the movie "Braveheart" will remember her portrayed in mind-numbingly inaccurate ways).

This made King Edward III Philip's grandson and successor in a direct line through Philip's daughter. However, the French could not tolerate the idea that the King of England might also become King of France, so French lawyers brought up what's known as the Salic Law, which stated that property could not descend through a female. Based upon that law the French gave the crown to Philip of Valois, a nephew of Philip IV. Edward III, as combative and aggressive as his famous grandfather Edward I (a man of imposing height known, among other things, as "Hammer of the Scots" for the way he ravaged that nation) had a valid claim to the throne of France and he chose violence to take what was his.

War broke out in earnest in 1340. The French had assembled a great fleet to support an army with which they intended to crush all resistance in Flanders, thereby knocking out the legs of their enemy by eliminating English financial strength. This also would allow the French to establish an area close to England to launch a possible invasion.

When the ships had anchored in a dense pack at Sluys in the modern Netherlands, the English attacked and destroyed it with fire ships. Because the ships were packed so closely together the English were able to achieve total victory in a battle fought across the anchored ships, almost like a land battle on a wooden battlefield. This gave the English complete control of the Channel and the North Sea, meaning they were now safe from French invasion, could attack France at will and could expect that the war would be fought on French soil and thus at French expense.

Edward invaded northern France in 1345. Pitched battle was actually avoided at this time, with the more common military tactic being the chevauchee, swift mounted raids aimed at pillaging, burning, and destroying the enemy's territory, especially their crops, villages, mills, and the people around them. But by this time the Black Death had arrived, and his army was weakened by sickness. As the English force tried to make its way safely to a fortified Channel port in 1346, the French attempted to force them into a battle. The English were finally pinned against the coast by a much superior French army at Crecy. Edward's army was a combined force: archers, pikemen, light infantry, and cavalry; the French, by contrast, was an army essentially of entirely heavy cavalry.

The battle was a disaster for the French. The English took up position on the crest of a hill, and the French cavalry tried to ride up the slope to get at their opponents. The long climb up soggy ground tired and slowed the French horses, giving the English archers and foot soldiers ample opportunity to wreak havoc in the French ranks. Those few French who reached the crest of the hill found themselves faced with rude, but effective, barriers, and, as they tried to withdraw, they were attacked by the small but fresh English force of mounted knights.

Facing much the same battlefield situation at the battle of Poiters in 1356, the French employed the same tactics they had used at Crecy, with the same dismal result -- but they did at least show a tenacious dedication to predictability and an insistence on not letting facts get in the way of a thrilling cavalry charge. The French king and many nobles were captured, and many others were slaughtered. The first phase of the war ended with a treaty in 1360, but France continued to suffer. The English had in part employed mercenaries who, once the army was disbanded and they were no longer getting paid, lived off the country by theft, ransom, and plunder.

And murder. Lots and lots of murder. And torture. But mostly murder.

As the war dragged on the English were slowly forced back, losing more and more of the French territory they had previously captured. Because there was now less French land to support their war effort the war became more expensive for them. This caused various conflicts at home, such as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and several small civil wars.

But in the reign of Henry V the English took the offensive. In 1415 at Agincourt, not far from Crecy, the French relapsed into their old tactics of massed heavy cavalry charge once again, and were once again disastrously defeated -- plus les choses changent, le plus elles restent les memes, non? The English recovered much of the ground they had lost, and a new peace was based upon Henry's marriage to the French princess Katherine. But with Henry's death in 1422, the war resumed.

In the following years, the French developed a sense of national identity; with the French now having a greater unity, the French king was able to field massive armies on much the same model as the English. In addition, however, the French government began to appreciate the modern style of warfare, and new military commanders, such as Bertran du Guesclin, began to use guerilla and small war tactics of fighting. The war dragged on for many years, but eventually, the French were successful in driving the English out of their country altogether, ending English attempts to control continental territory and the beginning of its emphasis upon maritime supremacy.

The Hundred Years' War is the major military event taking place during the development of the Longsword and its systems of use. As you can see by the time frame involved, it brackets the lives of both Liechtenauer and de'i Liberi, as well as the time when the Longsword was first becoming a common and typical piece of martial equipment. While we can't say the War influenced this technique or that, we can definitely note the overall uneasy mindset of the time reflected in the art.

The lawlessness, the chaos, the general sense of instability during and following the War (and The Plague, but details of that will be left to another post) contributed to the aggressive and intense style seen in the German and the Italian tradition. If you never know what desperate person might suddenly come along to attack you for a few gold coins and nice shoes -- let alone for a scrap of food -- then it only makes sense you are going to want to be exceedingly intense with your sword work.

Think of that historical picture the next time you throw a Zorn or a Zwerch. Nothing develops in a historical vacuum, most especially not our historical martial arts.

So rather than asking the usual sort of questions I do to end a blog post, let me ask this: What do you think of giving some historical background to our martial arts? Do you like having a bit more knowledge of the time frame from which our weapons come, or do you not really care all that much?

Stay loose and train hard, people!

-- Scott

Credits: Maps and historical information taken from the "Medieval History Lecture Index," by professor Lynn Harry Nelson; witty asides in French (and snarky comments about the French) are all mine.