The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  The advent of the crusades had a powerful effect upon the concept and practice of knighthood, and this impact was still being felt in the 1160s. Through the twelfth century, there was a strong expectation that warriors would participate in a crusade, mirroring the ‘glorious’ achievements of their forbears; becoming not just milites (soldiers), but militia Christi (knights of Christ). In time, William himself would feel the call of this ‘higher cause’. But these holy wars also prompted many to question how Christian knights should live and behave back in the West, encouraging the gradual evolution of codes of conduct. This sense that knights should aspire to be more than mere mounted mercenaries accelerated when Christian knightly orders sprang up in the wake of the First Crusade. Movements such as the Templar Order fused the ideals of knighthood and monasticism, and actively derided the existing paradigm of Europe’s warrior class, literally branding themselves as the ‘New Knighthood’. They proved to be extraordinarily popular, attracting thousands of recruits and a tide of charitable donations from nobles throughout Europe. Indeed, William’s own father, John Marshal, gave the Templars a manor at Rockley, in Wiltshire, in 1157.

  William Marshal arrived in Normandy, therefore, with a certain sense of the past achievements of the knightly class, and some awareness of the elevated standards to which this elite cadre might now be held. However, stories and sources that fused myth and reality must have exerted a powerful influence over his ideas. He had been brought up in an aristocratic culture that commemorated the great deeds of warriors in epic songs – the ‘chansons de geste’ (literally the ‘songs of deeds’). These publically performed, medieval French poems wove tales of daring bravery and wondrous martial prowess around real historical events and figures. The popular Chanson d’Antioche, for example, offered a fictionalised account of the First Crusaders’ siege of Antioch, in which the greatest knights cleaved their Muslim foes in two with a single sword blow. The most famous chanson of this period – the Chanson de Roland – drew upon the more distant Carolingian past of the eighth century, and immortalised the valorous death of Charlemagne’s commander, Roland, during an ill-fated attempt to conquer Iberia from the Moors.

  William also lived through the exact period in which Western Europe first developed an abiding fascination with the stories of King Arthur and his knights. The medieval legend of Arthur was constructed in the 1130s by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a monk of Celtic-Norman birth. His History of the Kings of Britain blended thin traces of reality with a fantastical, romanticised vision of the past: one that presented Arthur as a fabled hero to rival Charlemagne, traced the lineage of the first Britons back to Troy and incorporated the supposed prophecies of Merlin. Learned historians of the later twelfth century, like William of Newburgh, would deride Geoffrey’s work as a ‘laughable web of fiction’ that was packed with ‘wanton and shameful lying’, but that did nothing to stop it becoming a medieval bestseller. His Latin text was soon adapted, embroidered and translated into vernacular languages – most notably in Wace’s Roman de Brut – and an obsession with the Arthurian world spread like wildfire through royal and aristocratic circles.* Knights of Marshal’s generation were undoubtedly influenced by these myth-historic stories: Richard the Lionheart would carry a sword that he named Excalibur on the Third Crusade (though he soon sold it when running short of cash), and great emphasis was placed on the ‘discovery’ of Arthur’s and Guinevere’s supposed tomb at Glastonbury in 1191.

  TO BECOME A KNIGHT

  William Marshal arrived at Tancarville around 1160, a young adolescent ready to start his education. His biographer offered only the barest details of the six or seven years that William spent training in Normandy, probably as a result of Marshal’s own vague recollection of this distant period. He seems to have pictured himself as a rather lazy teenager whose main delights were food and sleeping. The History noted that ‘people thought it a great pity that he retired to bed so early and yet slept so late’, adding that many considered that William ‘ate and drank too much’ during his time at Tancarville. He even acquired the nickname ‘gasteviande’, or ‘greedy guts’ – hardly the soubriquet of a hero-in-the-making; and though the lord of Tancarville supposedly predicted that Marshal would ‘set the world alight’, this looks like an attempt on the biographer’s part to polish an otherwise underwhelming image.

  Nonetheless, it was in this formative phase of his career that William first developed many of the skills that would set him apart in later life – the abilities that enabled him to rise through the ranks to become a distinguished warrior – so it is probably safe to assume that not all of his time was spent eating or asleep; and while the precise details of his transformation from untutored boy to adult knight may be lost, it is possible to reconstruct the outline of his experiences.*

  A noble life

  William’s schooling in Normandy would not have focused solely upon the hard grind of military training, but included broader instruction in a range of skills. Like any noble-born boy of this era, William had to learn how to fit into aristocratic society, assimilating the bluff etiquette of Anglo-Norman martial culture, while trying to grasp the subtle nuances of its mores. The hub of any aristocratic community, including that of Tancarville Castle, was the great hall. This was where a noble’s household would gather each day for a communal meal, paid for and provided by the lord in affirmation of his patronage and largesse. These assemblies could be crowded, noisy, even chaotic, with a smoky chamber packed full of men, women and animals (dogs, birds of prey, even horses might be welcomed in the hall, though pigs and cats were frowned upon). In this setting, young Marshal received some favour, for his biographer wrote that William ‘partook of the choicest dishes placed before his lord’ – the equivalent of being seated at the top table.

  A remarkable treatise on manners dating from the late twelfth century – Daniel of Beccles’ Book of the Civilised Man – gives some insight into how nobles were expected to behave in a medieval great hall. In this public milieu, a measure of decorum was advised. Nobles were warned not to comb their hair, clean their nails, scratch themselves or look for fleas in their breeches. As a rule, shoes should not be removed and urinating was to be avoided, unless of course you were a lord in his own hall, in which case it was permissible.

  The process of communal eating demanded particular etiquette. Some 200 years before the widespread use of the fork, knives were employed as the main utensil. Food was delivered to the table on shared ‘messes’, then picked up from these platters and placed on an individual ‘trencher’, though if one sought to appear polite, this action would be performed with only the thumb and the forefinger. Beccles’ treatise counselled nobles to sit up straight when eating, refrain from placing their elbows on the table and face their superiors. Speaking with a full mouth, picking your teeth or nose were all frowned upon, and a cultured diner who wished to spit should turn away from the table, or look to the ceiling if they needed to belch.

  As a member of the aristocracy, William enjoyed a richer and more varied diet than many of his contemporaries, though rough-ground bread, eggs, cheese and common vegetables like peas and beans, would still have been mainstays. Ale was drunk as a matter of course, because the fermentation process killed off germs (making it safer than water) and wine was likewise popular in more affluent circles. A noble of the lord of Tancarville’s standing could afford to serve meat – such as mutton, pork, chicken and beef – and fish in his great hall on a regular basis, though the natural flavours of such fare were often overwhelmed by the heavily seasoned sauces favoured by medieval cooks. These employed the likes of sage, garlic, mustard and coriander, and might also include more exotic spices, such as pepper, nutmeg and saffron.

  Alongside his experiences in the great hall, it is likely that the teenage William was exposed to aristocratic fashion. Given the localism of medieval society, trends in dress and hair were relatively slow to change, but styles came in and out of vogue nonetheless. The core elements of a male noble’s wardrobe
were stockings or hose, fashioned from silk or wool, a shirt, often with detachable sleeves, usually worn under a tunic, with variations on a coat or surcoat (sometimes furlined) worn outdoors, topped off with a mantle or cloak. Popular fads of the day covered everything from the tightness and hue of one’s sleeves to the precise length of cloak and the snugness of one’s shoes – for a time the most fashionable footwear was so close-fitting that they could hardly be pulled on. Like the rich and powerful in any era, twelfth-century European nobles used clothing as markers of status, favouring expensive fabrics, coloured with rare dyes. But in the course of William’s life it became increasingly popular for individual lords and families to sport distinctive colour schemes when in public, and before long these were adopted as a kind of uniform by a noble’s mesnie – brightly visible symbols of collective identity.

  Hair was another potent marker of status and identity in the medieval world. Centuries earlier, the Merovingian kings of Francia had been revered for the remarkable length of their locks, while monks used the tonsure (in which a section of the scalp was shaved) to indicate their dedication to religious life. When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, the prevalent fashion among the Normans had been to shave a large swathe of the back of one’s head – a distinctive style much in evidence in the Bayeux Tapestry – while a generation later a craze for centre-partings that left the forehead scandalously exposed briefly took hold. By the 1160s the new Angevin royal dynasty was setting the pace, and Henry II was said to have preferred a simple, close-cropped hairstyle. Most of William’s Anglo-Norman and Angevin peers would have been clean-shaven, though some may have sported moustaches. Many regarded a beardless face as an indicator of Frankish (or French) identity. Stories abound from the crusading world of Muslims cutting off their beards to disguise themselves as Franks, or of scruffy crusaders neglecting to shave during a long siege only to be mistaken for bearded-Turks and accidently butchered.

  William Marshal’s education

  Alongside coaching in manners and dress, boys of William’s status were routinely schooled in a range of aristocratic skills and pursuits. Most learnt to read, perhaps even to write, practising on wax tablets. Knowledge of Latin – the language of law, governance and the Church – was valued and cultivated. Henry II’s famous son Richard the Lionheart was a remarkably skilled Latinist, able to crack jokes in the language at the expense of less fluent clerics. In this regard, William Marshal was unusual, as he never acquired a proper knowledge of Latin, though he may have achieved a very basic level of literacy.

  Nobles were also expected to develop some proficiency in swimming, dancing and singing, and many gave over long hours to the day’s game of choice: a simplified version of chess involving betting. Perhaps the most emblematic of all medieval aristocratic pursuits was hunting. This was one of the ultimate symbols of social status, because certain species of quarry and hunting grounds were reserved for the nobility or royalty. The sport was also deemed to provide valuable training for war, as it honed martial skills, including horse riding and archery. Most hunts were conducted from horseback, using dogs, falcons and hawks, and targeted the likes of deer, wild boar or wolves.

  Many of the kings that William Marshal met during his life were obsessed with hunting. Henry II was described by one of his courtiers as ‘a great connoisseur of hounds and hawks, and most greedy of that vain sport [of hunting]’, though rumour had it he engaged in this rigorous pursuit so regularly only because he feared becoming fat. Of course, hunting was not without its dangers. Henry I’s brother, William Rufus, had died in a hunting ‘accident’ in southern England’s New Forest in 1100, supposedly struck by a stray arrow (though Henry’s presence on the hunt and his seizure of the crown just three days later have caused some to question whether this was regicide).

  Marshal himself appears to have shown only limited interest in the likes of dancing, music or even hunting. His first passion was for the art of war and, through the six years he spent at Tancarville, most of his time, day after day, would have been spent in arduous military training, hardening his mind and body, developing the raw physical strength and endurance necessary to function as a professional warrior in the Middle Ages. As one of William’s contemporaries explained, a man had to learn to deal with the brutish rigours of combat. It was only after he had ‘taken blows’, seen ‘his blood flow’ and felt ‘his teeth crack under the fist of his foe’, yet still managed to fight on, that a man could ‘engage in battle confidently’. On its own, though, sheer toughness was not enough. To enter the ranks of Europe’s knightly elite, William also had to master three essential, interlocking skills: martial horsemanship, hand-to-hand combat and the ability to fight in medieval armour.

  Medieval horses, arms and armour

  In the twelfth century, successful knights were incredibly adept horsemen. Most of these medieval warriors had a natural affinity for horses – their daily lives were filled with the sounds and pungent smells of horse and stable, and many of their waking hours were spent in the saddle. The horse was a primary marker of knightly status, but also an intimate companion in combat, an animal in whom the rider placed his trust, perhaps even his life. Not surprisingly, favoured mounts were pampered, treasured, sometimes even named.

  Men like William Marshal knew only too well that not all horses were born equal. Knights typically were expected to own at least three different types of horses – each bred and trained with a specific role in mind. In terms of cost and function, a vast gulf separated these various categories. For general riding and travel, William used a light ‘palfrey’, while a stout and stocky ‘sumpter’ carried baggage, weapons and armour. However, Marshal’s most valuable mount was his destrier or warhorse – the animal ridden in combat. These cost anywhere from £40 to £100, sometimes even more. Working from the rates current in the 1160s, for the average price of one destrier William could have purchased either 40 palfreys, 200 packhorses, 500 oxen or a staggering 4,500 sheep.

  Most twelfth-century warhorses measured between fifteen and sixteen hands (five feet to five-feet-four) and were bred not for straight-line speed, but a balance of fleet-footed agility, strength, endurance and martial temperament. The best stock was deemed to be Arabian, often imported via Spain or Italy, and mounts of this type were carefully reared and conditioned. Through such training, the finest destriers could be expected to respond to a rider’s every command, even without the use of reins (as hands might be needed for shield and sword in combat). Crucially, they would also be inured to the raucous tumult and terrifying violence of a medieval battlefield. Horse armour was not yet common, though it was in use by the end of the century, but a destrier might be cloaked in cloth covering or caparison, decked out in a knightly household’s chosen colours.

  By the time William Marshal reached the age of twenty, he must already have spent thousands of hours in the saddle. Certainly, he achieved a high level of skill in the art of horsemanship and, in the course of his later career, proved able to deftly control and manoeuvre his mount, outclassing many an opponent. Much of Marshal’s fortune, both on the tournament field and in actual battle, would be founded on this equestrian expertise. But William also had to learn how to fight from horseback, handling a range of weapons.

  The most important of these was the sword – the totemic weapon of knighthood. It played a central role in the ritual of knighting, and both the carrying of a sword, and the ability to show skill in its use, came to be intimately associated with this elite warrior class. In William’s lifetime, the typical sword was single-handed, with a double-edged blade of around thirty-four inches, a broad point and an overall weight of some two-and-a-half pounds. Swords could be mass-produced for huge campaigns, like the crusades of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the finest weapons were masterpieces of metallurgy and smithcraft: wrought from a precise mixture of iron and steel to yield the perfect blend of strength and flexibility, capable of holding a razor-sharp edge that might slice through un-armoured
limbs with a single stroke and extraordinarily well-balanced in the hand.

  The first surviving manuals of European swordsmanship date from the early fourteenth century, so it is impossible to know precisely how William trained and fought with this weapon, but it is clear that he honed his ability to wield his sword both while mounted and on foot. This must have required the daily repetition of practice sword strokes through his teenage years and beyond – so as to develop strength and acquire muscle memory – and regular sparring to refine coordination and agility. By the time he became a knight, Marshal was an effective swordsman, but so far as the History was concerned, his primary gift was not flashy technique, but the brutish physicality that enabled him to deliver crushing blows. With sword in hand, William was, in the words of his biographer, a man who ‘hammered like a blacksmith on iron’.

  Marshal probably also trained with a number of other mêlée weapons popular with twelfth-century knights, including the dagger, axe, mace and war-hammer, but much of his time would have been devoted to mastering the lance. By construction this was a fairly rudimentary weapon – often simply a ten- to twelve-foot-long straight spar of hewn wood, usually of ash – but it was fiendishly difficult to use from horseback. The lance would be held under the arm (or couched) during a charge, and directing its point towards a target with any accuracy required immense skill. Lances often broke after one or two uses, but a successful strike could cause devastating damage to an opponent. In the course of his career, William would witness the lethal potential of this weapon with his own eyes and he would also be called upon to charge down one of the greatest warriors of the age, Richard the Lionheart, with lance in hand.