Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside

This alternative account of peasant life during crisis is a welcome addition to the historiography of late-medieval France…a useful corrective to most standard interpretations of warfare and peasantry. SPECULUM This work examines the soldier-peasant relationship in the context of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), aiming to bring out more closely the realities of the situation. It seeks an understanding of different attitudes: how aristocratic soldiers reconciled the ideals of chivalry with exploitation of non-combatants, and how French peasants reacted to the soldiery, drawing on the late-medieval literature of chivalry and political commentary in England and (especially) in France. Employing additional documentary material, including the largely unpublished records of the French royal chancery, the book also describes the ways in which individual peasants and village communities were exploited by soldiers, and how, in order to survive, they adjusted to and reacted against their treatment.