by Sean McGlynn
Surveying the aftermath at Waterloo, Wellington referred to the human cost of war, saying ‘that next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained’. Medieval chroniclers were not always so reflective, as the graphic passage below demonstrates. It comes from an Arab writer walking across the battlefield of Hattin in 1187, where Saladin had just crushed a crusading army. It could easily be a description of any scene at the end of a battle in the Middle Ages.
The dead were scattered over the mountains and valleys…. Hattin shrugged off their carcasses, and the perfume of victory was thick with the stench of them. I passed by them and saw the limbs of the fallen cast naked on the field of battle, scattered in pieces over the site of the encounter, lacerated and disjointed, with heads cracked open, throats split, spines broken, necks shattered, feet in pieces, noses mutilated, extremities torn off, members dismembered, parts shredded, eyes gouged out, stomachs disembowelled, hair coloured with blood, midriffs slashed, fingers sliced off, chests shattered, the ribs broken, the joints dislocated … throats slit, bodies cut in half, lips shrivelled, foreheads and ribs pierced … faces lifeless … wounds gaping, life’s last breath exhaled…. rivers of blood ran freely…. O sweet rivers of victory! O sweet heart’s comforter!10
As we shall see below, this was not the worst of the carnage; even this horrific shedding of blood did not satisfy the victors.
MASSACRES OF PRISONERS
The focus of this book is how the excesses of war affected non-combatants: women, children, those in holy orders, peasants and prisoners of war. The laws of war, such as they were, afforded protection to these groups; the practice of war frequently did not. Jus ad bellum, a just cause for war, was either too often ignored or too disproportionately embraced for over consideration of jus in bello, the justification of actions in war. The effective waging of total war in the twentieth century is both condemned and justified for putting non-combatants in the front line, giving us Dresden and Hiroshima. But the Middle Ages were not so different: economic targets were no less important than military ones; displays of power and terror could and did affect the resolve of enemies. In truth, with the possible exception of the age of battles in the Late Modern period, non-combatants were always the most vulnerable victims in time of war. Unlike most sieges and practically all ravaging expeditions, medieval battles represented war in its ‘purest’ form: no women, no children, and priests only present on the periphery, praying that their God would bring victory and hence bestow His blessings on their side’s cause. The field of battle itself was filled with nothing but combatants, soldiers whose sole purpose was to destroy the opposing army. When a soldier surrendered, or was captured and disarmed, his status immediately changed to that of a non-combatant. This was a clear delineation that, in theory, secured the prisoner’s life. But the messy and bloody reality of medieval warfare meant that surrender or capture was rarely a castiron guarantee of safety. Battlefield confusion and the fog of war would always mean that some men who had thrown away their arms would be cut down; the bloodlust of the victors could also mean lack of restraint or unwillingness to take prisoners when the heat of battle had not yet fully subsided. In the majority of the massacres discussed below, combat had come to a definite end. All have this in common: the killing of prisoners was a deliberate and calculated act, carried out on the explicit orders of the victorious army’s commander. With one exception, the commanders were all kings.
Verden, 782
We start with an episode that falls outside our high age of chivalry and which did not follow on immediately from a battle, but instead followed a revolt. It is included here for three reasons. First, it concerns the emperor Charlemagne, that great paradigm of chivalrous virtue whom all Christendom looked up to and venerated as the epitome of chivalry. Just as Charlemagne looked back to the great days of the Roman Empire for his inspiration, so medieval princes looked back to Charlemagne’s imperium as a golden age to be emulated; acclaim for Charles the Great was universal throughout the medieval period. Secondly, it demonstrates the bitterness and savagery that always characterized religious and frontier wars. Charlemagne’s actions at Verden make an interesting comparison with those renowned symbols of personal chivalry Richard the Lionheart and Saladin four centuries later in the frontier territories of the Holy Land. Thirdly, the response of contemporaries to what happened at Verden is a revealing one.
By the time Charlemagne was crowned with the revived title of Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800, he had extended the boundaries of his Frankish kingdom to such an extent that the monk Alcuin (in effect Charlemagne’s minister of education after their meeting in 781) had already labelled the King’s territories a Christian empire two years earlier. Of his many campaigns to subjugate peoples and regions coterminous with his ever expanding Frankish state, the expeditions against the Saxons from 772 and 804 were some of the most viciously fought. Einhard, Charlemagne’s contemporary biographer, wrote: ‘No war ever undertaken by the Frankish people was more prolonged, more full of atrocities or more demanding of effort … The Saxons, like almost all the peoples living in Germany, are ferocious by nature.’ Einhard is also quick to emphasize the spiritual dimensions of the conflict: the Saxons ‘are much given to devil worship and they are hostile to our religion. They think it no dishonour to violate and transgress the laws of God and man.’11
Charlemagne had three main aims in Saxony: annexation, conversion and, ultimately, possession of Frisia. The religious element of these wars was expressed in 772, when Charlemagne completely obliterated the Irminsul, described in sources as both a shrine and an idol that served as the Saxons’ main sanctuary of their pagan cult. This was a symbolic action to intimidate the heathen Saxons; it was more a political act than a religious one. Even the man who was to become the inaugural imperator of the Holy Roman Empire, an institution that survived until the Charlemagne-imitating Napoleon ironically dissolved it, put temporal concerns before spiritual ones: he placed his Saxony operations on hold as he mobilized to assist both Christian and Muslim leaders who had requested help in Spain. This led to the famous defeat of his rearguard at the pass of Roncevaux in 778. It was here that Roland’s brave, though perhaps unnecessary, death in battle later became immortalized in The Song of Roland, the most celebrated and influential of the Old French epics that recounted the valiant deeds of chivalrous heroes who inspired courtly culture and battlefield bravery for centuries. This glorious defeat served only to enhance futher Charlemagne’s reign as one of virtuous chivalry. The fact that the great Christian king had, very much like that Iberian icon of knighthood El Cid, helped Muslim allies, is often glossed over. It serves as a salutary reminder that religious enmity was – and still is – at best only ever a partial excuse for the justification of wartime atrocities. Political and military considerations must always come first when seeking explanations. This is equally true for Verden.
The Saxon wars were so protracted because whenever knocked down the Saxons refused to stay there; whenever Charlemagne thought he had brought them to heel they would rebel. This was tiresome enough, but the utter defeat of a Frankish force in Lower Saxony at Mount Suntel in 782, when four counts, some twenty nobles and most of their troops were annihilated by Saxons under Widukind, elicited an overwhelming response from Charlemagne. He assembled a huge army, entered Lower Saxony and cowed the Saxon nobility into submission without a fight. He ordered them to identify and round up all those who had fought with Widukind. The Saxon chiefs did so and handed them over to Charlemagne at Verden on the banks of the river Aller. Some were enslaved; the rest – as many as 4,500 – were beheaded in a single day. The scale of the slaughter and its manner are truly horrific. (As so often when dealing with figures derived from medieval sources, it is important to allow for the distinct possibility – and frequent certainty of – number inflation and the symbolism of a given figure; but even if the 4,500 accepted by many historians is too high, it nevertheless still denotes a wholesale massacre
of frightening proportions.)
We have explored the various gruesome punishments meted out by rulers to political and military opponents, but it is hard to imagine Charlemagne inflicting such retribution on a similar number of Christian enemies. The clash of faiths certainly added an increased element of brutality to Charlemagne’s response. It has been argued that, just prior to Verden, exasperated at the resilient obduracy of the Saxons, two leading clergy – Abbot Sturm of Fulda and Lul, archbishop of Mainz and disciple of his predecessor St Boniface – had successfully urged Charlemagne to adopt even harsher measures to be employed in the war against the pagans. However, it is interesting to note that there were dissenting voices within the Church, taken aback at the enormity of the massacre: Alcuin, for example, warned that violence begot only violence. Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, encomiastic biographers of Charlemagne, pass silently over the whole episode, as if ashamed to associate the King with such a shocking event. Indeed, lest Verden sully the saintly image of Charlemagne, the massacre has in some quarters been passed off as myth. (Not so with SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who established a monument to the executed Saxons.)
Charlemagne had other well-practised options at Verden. He might have executed a number of the more important rebels, taken others hostage, sold yet more into slavery and, in a well-established policy, dispersed the rest around his territories in a form of internal exile. Einhard informs us that during the Saxon wars Charlemagne ‘transported some ten thousand men … and dispersed them in small groups, with their wives and children, in various parts of Gaul and Germany’.12 At Verden, frustrated at yet another uprising and encouraged by the exhortations of some bloodthirsty churchmen, he may have decided these measures were no longer sufficient. This may also have justified for him his undoubted desire for vengeance after the severe and embarrassing defeat at Suntel. This was not a petty motive but a practical measure: the defeat had exposed a huge weakness in the Franks’ seeming ability to project their power; as such, a counteracting show of force was necessary to disabuse the Saxons of any such dangerous notions. Additionally, by killing so many who had taken up arms against him, he was also performing a simple exercise in numbers: now there would be a few thousand less Saxons to fight against Carolingian expansion. However, the fact that the Saxons had so readily submitted before Charlemagne’s army and acquiesced to his demands for handing over the combatants reveals that the show of force had already proven to be efficacious. The massacre seems to have been the result of a combination of the personal and the political, both inextricably intertwined in the figure of a medieval king: revenge for a humiliating and costly military reverse, and a display of practical terror to cow the enemy. It is remarkable how so stark and spectacular a lesson could be so transient. The following year, the Saxons took up arms again. They would not be subjugated for another two decades.
Waterford, 1170
Britain’s troubled relations with Ireland have been punctuated by atrocities up until the end of the twentieth century. An atrocity also marks the beginning of England’s colonization of Ireland, announcing the onset of a long line of brutality that has marked Anglo-Irish conflict, especially during the centuries of frontier conquests. Internal warfare in Ireland was a savage affair with quarter in short supply; when English knights arrived in force from England in 1170, they accommodatingly left behind many of their chivalric ideals. Instead, they brought with them a violent superiority complex, fostered by the propaganda of twelfth-century English writers, that conveniently justified their civilizing mission against the benighted barbarians on the Celtic fringe.
Exactly eight centuries before ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland began, English soldiers were invited over to Ireland by King Dermot of Leinster to aid him in his wars there. Mercenaries made their way across the Irish Sea, but intervention became organized and serious only with Strongbow’s private expedition there in 1169. Strongbow – Richard FitzGilbert, Earl of Pembroke – agreed to send troops to Dermot on condition that the Irish king marry his daughter Aoife to him and so placed him in line for succession. Strongbow’s fortunes had declined precipitously and he saw in the Irish expedition an opportunity to restore his political and financial position. The Normans had carved out kingdoms for themselves in England and Sicily; in Ireland their English successors could perhaps do so again. In 1169, Strongbow sent out an advanced force to prepare the way for his campaign the next year. This expeditionary force included impoverished adventurers looking, as many landless knights and younger sons did, to make money from war, whether in the form of booty, from military patronage, or from advantageous marriage. Gerald of Wales describes this contingent as comprising eleven knights and seventy archers; in Gerald’s estimation, foremost amongst these was his cousin Raymond FitzWilliam, known as Raymond le Gros.
On arrival, they set in at Baginbun (originally known as Dun Domhnaill), four miles from Waterford, and constructed a flimsy, makeshift timber-and-earth fort surrounded by a ditch. This was completed rapidly as the men of Waterford soon bore down on them. Gerald puts their figure at 3,000, drawn up in three companies, while the author of The Song of Dermot and the Earl says between 3,000 and 4,000, against no more than 100 English. Whatever the truth of the figures, the English were heavily outnumbered. They made a sally, hoping that the combination of their heavily armoured shock charge and archery would drive the Irish off. But numbers got the better of them and they were driven back into their camp. Here they rallied and counter-attacked with such success that they put the Irish to flight, only ending their killing spree when they ‘were worn out by striking’.13 It was a remarkable victory for such a small force, demonstrating the effectiveness of even just a few professional knights and archers. The contemporary chronicler Gervase of Canterbury notes that the Irish always found it impossible to beat numerically inferior but tactically superior English troops, who were braver and more skilful.
One of the most important spoils of this triumph was the capture of seventy leading figures from the Irish side. These were shackled in fetters and brought inside the camp. The English then debated what to do with the captives. Raymond le Gros took the view that they should be ransomed; Gerald argues that the English would have received a vast sum of money for them, or even the town of Waterford itself. Hervey of Montmorency insisted that they be killed; it was his counsel that was taken. Although they agree on the number of prisoners executed, Gerald and The Song of Dermot diverge as to how this was done. Gerald claims that they were thrown from the cliff top. The Song of Dermot offers a more gruesome alternative. The writer of this Old French epic says they were beheaded and their torsos then cast off the cliff. This source also asserts that their executioner was Alice of Abervenny (Abergavenny?), whose lover had been killed by the Irish in the battle. However, The Song of Dermot somewhat contradicts itself by also saying that the knights were responsible. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that a female camp follower would have the strength and stamina necessary to wield an axe to decapitate seventy men and then throw their bodies into the sea. If this version holds any truth, it is possible that Alice may have killed one or two as a token revenge.
The Song of Dermot explains clearly why the Normans carried out this mass execution: it was to display their ferocity and to terrorize the enemy:
Of the Irish there were taken
Quite as many as seventy.
But the noble knights
Had them beheaded.
To a wench they gave
An axe of tempered steel
And she beheaded them all
And then threw their bodies over a cliff.
…
In order to disgrace the Irish
The knights did this
And the Irish of the district
Were discomfited in this way.
To their country they returned
Outdone and discomfited.14
Gerald of Wales’s account in his Conquest of Ireland offers an altogether more interesting explanation in the form of t
he fascinating three-page debate between Raymond and Hervey. This provides an invaluable insight into the military and moral dilemma between mercy and ruthlessness; between the dictates of humanity and the expediencies of war. Raymond’s speech attempts in a reasoned way to marry mercy with practical consideration. He starts by reaffirming his hardy credentials, claiming that he would not insist on sparing his enemies, clearly defining separately the non-combatant status of the prisoners by identifying them as ‘vanquished opponents’. They deserve clemency because ‘they are not thieves, seditious, traitors or robbers’, rather ‘they have been defeated by us while they are defending their country’, which is ‘assuredly an honourable avocation!’ Raymond argues that mercy to these fellow ‘human beings’ would offer a better example to the Irish than cruelty, torture and death, which would ‘bring infamy and shame upon us, and would considerably damage our reputations’. He then appeals to his comrades’ more unsentimental side, arguing that the deaths of the captives affords no real military purpose, whereas ‘their ransom must be considered far more advantageous to us … because it will augment the soldiers’ pay and give an example of noble conduct’. This last reason is an eminently sensible tacit warning appealing to self-interest: if we do not kill their men when they are captive, perhaps they will not kill us if we fall into their hands. Such considerations were a very real restraint on wartime excesses, as we shall see later. He then ends with an impassioned description of the soldier’s ferocious role in battle, and his humane behaviour after it. (This exceptional conclusion to his speech is quoted at the end of this book.)
