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E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
384 Seiten
Englisch
Faber & Fabererschienen am17.04.2014Main
"Superb and quite unputdownable." (Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times). "A magnificent achievement - the most exciting book of its kind for years." (Good Book Guide) (Editor's Choice). This is the hugely acclaimed, best-selling life of John Hawkwood, one of the outstanding figures of English and European history. "A narrative driven with robust gusto, splendid writing and an eye for the grotesque." (Bill Saunders, Independent on Sunday). "Simply the most vivid account of the late medieval world I heve ever read." (Terry Jones). "Brilliant ...Dazzlingly brings to life one of the most swashbuckling figures in European history." (Sunday Express). "Wonderful." (Christopher Hudson, Daily Mail) (Critics' Choice). "Outstanding." (Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times) (Books of the Year).mehr
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TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
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E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
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Produkt

Klappentext"Superb and quite unputdownable." (Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times). "A magnificent achievement - the most exciting book of its kind for years." (Good Book Guide) (Editor's Choice). This is the hugely acclaimed, best-selling life of John Hawkwood, one of the outstanding figures of English and European history. "A narrative driven with robust gusto, splendid writing and an eye for the grotesque." (Bill Saunders, Independent on Sunday). "Simply the most vivid account of the late medieval world I heve ever read." (Terry Jones). "Brilliant ...Dazzlingly brings to life one of the most swashbuckling figures in European history." (Sunday Express). "Wonderful." (Christopher Hudson, Daily Mail) (Critics' Choice). "Outstanding." (Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times) (Books of the Year).
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780571266555
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2014
Erscheinungsdatum17.04.2014
AuflageMain
Seiten384 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse5531 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.1406161
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe





CHAPTER ONE
Bad Company



I will make war my work.

I will become rich or die

Before I see my country again

Or my parents or my friends.

John Gower, Mirour de l´omme

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land


Thickset men who relished a noisy brawl in a tavern, a tussle over a whore, stole through the frozen nightscape with the lightness of ghosts. Their horses, and the clanking matériel of an army on the move, were held back. The guards posted along the town walls squinted into the blue-grey shadows, and saw nothing untoward. The water in bowls set out on the top of towers to detect vibrations did not ripple. By the time the scaling ladders had been assembled - each section silently and quickly fitted into the next - and placed against the foot of the walls, it was too late. The attackers poured up and over, and rushed through the dark streets. Members of the town´s defence militia stumbled, half-dressed, from their houses, and attempted to drive back the assailants. But they were soon overwhelmed as more and more men hauled themselves over the walls. Everywhere, people emerged from their houses, clutching their children and their most important possessions, and ran, this way and that, frantic, barefoot. Some managed to follow the sound of the bells of the priory of Sant Pierre, ringing out the dreadful alarm, and lock themselves in the church there. Others simply stood in the streets, petrified, disorientated, inhabitants of pandemonium. The rest waited in their homes, knowing that escape was now impossible.

By sunrise on Tuesday, 29 December 1360, the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit, named for its bridge of twenty-five arches that spanned the Rhône, had been completely subdued. As its attackers dismantled their scaling ladders, they shouted greetings to their companions who, from their place of concealment in the outlying countryside, were now coming over the bridge, a noisy caravan of cavalry, infantry, engineers carrying spades and axes, carpenters, cooks, wagoners, farriers, pages, and drummer boys - to all appearances, a regular army. Inside, nervous castellans surrendered to their captors the keys to the town´s heavy gates, which were now swung open to allow the occupying army to pass. The traffic was one way: no citizen of Pont-Saint-Esprit was allowed to leave.


*


Almost eight months earlier, on 1 May 1360, commissioners appointed by the English king Edward III had met with their French counterparts to negotiate a truce in the war that had started twenty years before. Dozens of negotiators, plus scores of squires, notaries, servants, and messengers, squeezed into the little hamlet of Brétigny, not far from Chartres, and for seven days laboured over the marbled rhetoric of thirty-nine articles of legal and territorial details. On 8 May the two sides finally set their seals and signatures to the Treaty of Brétigny. As news of the truce spread, English soldiers walked barefoot into Chartres to give thanks to the Blessed Virgin in the cathedral dedicated to her.

The treaty marked a caesura in what history has termed the Hundred Years War (it actually lasted 115 years, but the shorthand is too useful to abandon). In 1328 Charles IV of France died leaving no direct heir. In the confusion that followed, his first cousin, Philip of Valois, assumed the crown. In July 1340 Philip received a letter from Edward III stating, in the politest of language, that he, as Charles IV´s nephew, was the rightful heir to the French throne, and that if this inheritance should be denied him, he would be obliged to take it by force. Philip politely demurred, replying that he was the lawful King of France. The formalities thus dispensed with, Edward launched an invasion of France.

For its participants, of course, there was no sense in the spring of 1360 that the conflict in which they were engaged would continue for another nine decades, reaching into the lives of their children and their grandchildren. In the end, four generations were dragged into this, the first total war, before Joan of Arc began the turn in French fortunes, and Charles VII completed the expulsion of the English from France (with the exception of Calais) in 1453.

Edward´s opponent Philip VI died in 1350, passing the crown to his son, Jean. He inherited a military nightmare: all the gains in the war so far had accrued to the English, who had crushed the French army at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 and repeated the humiliation at the Battle of Poitiers ten years later, in which King Jean himself was taken prisoner. By the early spring of 1360, Edward III had reached the gates of Paris, which he besieged. It was Passion Week, but the English king showed little interest in Christian mercy. He assaulted monasteries, and ordered that the suburbs of Paris burn from sunrise till midday´, as his men spread fire everywhere along his route´. But the blockade drained his resources, and on 13 April his tired and ill-provisioned army found itself under siege - by the weather. Long remembered as Black Monday, it was a foul day of mist´ which developed into such a tempest of thunder, lightning and hail that it seemed the world should have ended´. Freezing winds swept over Edward´s army, pinning it down on the stony heaths beyond Chartres. Helpless in their breastplates and chain mail, many knights died, electrocuted, on their horses. Thousands of vehicles became stuck in the mud, and had to be abandoned. It was this storm, according to one chronicler, that caused the English king to turn toward the church of our Lady at Chartres and devoutly vow to the Virgin that he would accept terms of peace´.

Under the Treaty of Brétigny´s terms, Edward renounced his claim to the French throne and to the overlordship of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Brittany, and Flanders, and promised to restore by the end of September any castles and cities held in these provinces. In return, he was to receive Calais, Ponthieu, and the whole of Aquitaine - nearly a quarter of France. King Jean, who had been a prisoner in London since his capture at the Battle of Poitiers, was to be released for a ransom of three million gold crowns, a sum so huge that many could not compute it.

On 19 May Edward and his son the Black Prince sailed for England from Honfleur. After stopping at Rye, they arrived a week later at Westminster. The bells of London pealed all day, rejoicing at the victory of the fifty-year-old king and his noble knights.


Bows and armour hung from every window on his route. Gold and silver leaf was showered on him from above. An escort of a thousand mounted men was provided by the London guilds to escort them through streets that would hardly take three men abreast. Guilds and companies drew up their members in livery at the roadside. Curiosity and pride brought many thousands out to see the [captured] King of France go by. The Bishop of London met the procession at Saint Paul´s churchyard, with the entire clergy of the city. Crowds crammed every building and alleyway. The press was so great that it took three hours for the Prince and his prisoner to cross the city from Bridge Street to the Savoy Palace.


From twelve suspended gilded cages provided by the goldsmiths of London, maidens scattered flowers of gold and silver filigree over the cavalcade. And then there was dancing, hunting and hawking,´ sang Sir John Chandos´s herald, and great jousts and banquets, as at the court of King Arthur.´

In June the treaty was ratified by Edward and the captive King of France in a solemn ceremony at the Tower of London. The two monarchs agreed that they and their children would live as brothers in perpetual peace and love. It was a courtly pledge, but one which was to expose their interpretation of perpetuity to ridicule.

On the last day of June King Jean began his journey back to France. His internment in England had been lenient enough: his accounts show expenses for horses, dogs, falcons, elaborate wardrobes, jesters, astrologers, musicians, books, and wine. A French historian reviewing the accounts five hundred years later said they made him feel sick. In France´s most miserable hour Jean had grown obese, his richly draped corpulence an insult to the pinched country to which he was now returning. It was France´s unhappy fate to provide the battleground for most of the Hundred Years War. Few of her regions were spared, and much of her population was demoralised and starving. Torn from without by invasion and pillage, and within by dissension, it was a country over which Jean would never properly be able to restore his royal authority.

But there was peace, respite from the terrible hostilities which had included the slaughters at Crécy and Poitiers, battles which had decimated the ranks of France´s nobility, and brought for England an almost mystical triumph. When England´s soldiers had walked barefoot to Chartres Cathedral, this was no hiccup of holiness, but a sincere acknowledgement that the Treaty of Brétigny was a direct manifestation of the divine will. Over the following months, thousands of soldiers started to return home. Geoffrey Chaucer, a young squire who had been captured by the...


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Autor

Frances Stonor Saunders is the former Arts Editor of theNew Statesman. Her first book,Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, has been translated into ten languages, and was awarded the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize. She is the author ofThe Woman Who Shot Mussolini. She lives in London.