Introduction

In the summer of 1346,  the kingdoms of England and France were at war. This feud of the Plantagenet (England) and Valois (France) dynasties, known as the Hundred Years’ War began less than a decade before 1346 and it would continue to rage until 1453. That summer, the king of England, Edward III set sail to invade France’s northern coast of Normandy. This invasion (figure 1) would become known as the Crécy Campaign after the momentous clash between Edward III and the king of France Philip VI near the Picard town of Crécy-en-Ponthieu on August 26th, 1346. Scholars of the Campaign have made this battle the focus of their attention and analysis. This has placed a critical group who were integrally involved in the Campaign into the background: non-combatants. Non-combatants (meaning those who did not participate in the military activity of the campaign) and their communities were the deliberate target of English forces who scorched large tracts of territory, stole enormous sums of wealth, and killed scores of the non-combatants living in Northern France. This destruction was largely a result of the English chevauchée strategy which sought to inflict as much damage on civilian property as possible as to weaken the enemy. [1] This made the destruction of non-combatant communities the central goal of the campaign. This project hopes to remedy the lack of thorough analysis of non-combatants in the current historiography by investigating the violence, terror, and brutality they experienced in 1346. In so doing, we can form a more complete image of warfare in the Later Middles Ages and how it impacted and was influenced by the social structures of the period.

Figure 1. Map of the Crécy Campaign. Taken from Airspace Historian.com; originally in Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston, The Battle of Crecy, 1346. (Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 2.

Research Questions

This study will investigate three central questions:

•The first question this study asks is how non-combatants with disparate social and economic statuses experienced the campaign differently. My project particularly investigates the disparities in violence between men and women as well as the wealthy and the poor. Thus, this project asks how the differing violence between social groups reflects the societal stratification of the Later Middle Ages.

•Secondarily, I examine the theological prohibitions in regard to violence against non-combatants. It therefore questions if Medieval Christian theology permitted these acts of violence.

•Lastly, I will weigh these theological restrictions against the possible motivations for violence that unfolded. In so doing I will ask as to what external factors could have led to such violent and cruel behavior against non-combatants if it was explicitly prohibited by Christian theology.

In order to address these questions, I will be drawing both from the large base of research on the Campaign from contemporary scholars, but the primary sources that survive. The majority of these primary sources will be in the form of chronicles. These works are less often eyewitness accounts by the author, but rather compilations of firsthand testimony formed into a single narrative. The True Chronicles by Jean le Bel and Froissart’s Chronicles will be the sources I will consult most frequently. In answering these questions, we can build a more complete picture of the events of the Campaign that thoroughly includes all those who were impacted by its devastating effects but nonetheless have not been given full attention by scholars.

Social Status and Violence

During the Crécy Campaign there were clear hierarchies of violence that reflect the broader societal stratification of the Later Medieval period. The first of these is the disparity between the experience of non-combatant men and women. Although it is a topic given little attention by contemporary scholars, sexual violence against women frequently occurred during the Campaign. This meant that women were not only subjected to the theft and murder but also suffered sexual violence. This incongruence reflects the social inequity of medieval women. [2] Wealth could also amplify or diminish the violence experienced during the Campaign. The mechanism through which this operated was ransoming, as affluent individuals (often in cities) could avoid death as a result of their ransom value; the poor had little hope of capture. [3] This mirrors the integral wealth inequality in medieval society. The three-part hierarchy of the nobility, clergy, and peasantry is evidently defined in the fortunes of the rich combatants of the campaign compared to their poorer counterparts. But, more specifically, the political and financial power of rich citizens (burgesses) in medieval cities is reflected in the practice of ransoming during and after urban battles.[4] These dynamics were exemplified clearly in one of the bloodiest moments of the campaign: the sack of the city of Caen on July 26th, 1346. The chronicler Jean le Bel relates a massacre (visualized below in Froissart’s Chronicles) of the inhabitants, large scale ransoming of the wealthy citizens, and the rape of many women in the city. [5]

Limitations on War

I contend that Christian theological precepts have placed restrictions on the behavior of combatants. These limitations included the prohibition of violence against non-combatants. This was especially true during the Middle Ages. The 7th century Irish abbot Adomnán mac Rónáin, for example wrote his Cáin Adomnáin law code that laid out strict regulations against the harming of particularly non-combatant women [6]. Around the year 1000, the Peace and Truce of God movement attempted to curtail the rampant fighting between French nobles and limit the violence against non-combatants. [7] In his Summa Theologica, the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas placed “pillagers” clearly outside his framework of “just war.” [8] Thus, we can see how the actions of English troops during the Campaign violated medieval Christian theology on licit warfare. This was recognized by contemporary English observers such as the poets John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer as well as the theologian John Wycliffe who reproached the actions of Edward III during the war on religious grounds in the 1370s and 1380s.[9]

Motivations

Although there were evident theological regulations on the behavior of soldiers during war, these were obviously dismissed during the Campaign. To find motivations for this we should look for external motivations rather than any intrinsic desire for violence. [10] The first factor to be explored is the general violent nature of medieval society. Acts of violence, such as public executions were common sights, and the military was large part of ordinary experience. [11] Such an omnipresence of violence could have made cruel behavior acceptable, particularly in the context of war. Secondarily, English soldiers may have had an impulse for vengeance after the French had conducted violent raids on the coast of England less than a decade prior. [12] During these raids, the French committed similarly brutal acts of violence against English non-combatants that would be done onto the non-combatant inhabitants of Northern France in 1346. These attacks sparked widespread panic and fostered a climate of hatred for the French which may have driven the acts of brutality committed by English forces during the Campaign. [13]

Conclusions

My study has demonstrated the importance of including the experience of non-combatants in studies of medieval warfare. By brining this oft-neglected group to the foreground, we build a more comprehensive picture of the devastating consequences of Medieval warfare. Although it does not have the same wide-reaching destructive impact of modern mechanized war, my study has shown that a medieval campaign could be disastrous for those who happened to be in its path. This can additionally convey how the structures of the medieval society influenced the character of warfare. What we recognize is that the non-combatant experience of war in the Middle Ages was inextricably linked to the social, religious, and political context of that period. Namely, my project has demonstrated how the brutality experienced by non-combatants was integrally connected to hierarchies of wealth and gender. Additionally, it has shown how social and political sentiments could supplant longstanding theological prescriptions for the protection of non-combatants. I hope that my study can prompt further examination of non-combatants during warfare in the Later Middle Ages so that a more thorough histography of medieval war can be built without the traditional overemphasis on monarchs and great battles.

Notes

[1] Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (Blackwell, 1996), 222; 228.

[2] Jonathan Gottschall, “Explaining Wartime Rape,” The Journal of Sex Research 41, no. 2 (May 1, 2004): 129–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490409552221, 130-131. Madonna J. Hettinger, “So Strategize: The Demands in the Day of the Peaseant Women in Medieval Europe,” Women in Medieval Western European Culture (Routledge, 2011), 47–63, 61. Theodore Evergates, Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 1. 

[3]Rémy Ambühl, Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War: Ransom Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 128-135; 147-148.

[4] Graeme Small, Late Medieval France (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 192.

[5]Jean le Bel, The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel, trans. Nigel Bryant (Boydell Press, 2011), 173.

[6]Adomnán, Adomnán’s “Law of the Innocents,” trans. Gilbert Márkus (Kilmartion House Trust, 2008), 19.

[7]Thomas Head and Richard Landes, The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000  (Cornell University Press, 1992), 1-4. 

[8]Alfred J. Freddoso, “New Translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Summa Theologica), University of Notre Dame, July 11, 2023, https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm Taken from Article 1 and 2 of Question 40 on War from the Part two of the Second Part 287.; Article 8 of Question 66 on Robbery and theft from the Part two of the Second Part 460-461.

[9] John Barnie, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War, 1337-99 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 129-131.

[10]Leonard Berkowitz, “Biological Roots: Are Humans Inherently Violent?” Psychological Dimensions of War (Sage, 1990), 24–40, 29.

[11]Sean McGlynn, By Sword and Fire (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008), 5-7.

[12]Alfred H. Burne, The Crecy War (Oxford University Press, 1955), 143. 

[13]Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle, vol. 1, 3 vols. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 248-249; 263. John Barnie, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War, 1337-99 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 45.