Susan J. Dudash
Christine de Pizan, Soldiers, and the Art of Warfare
A key player in the major socio-political events of late medieval France, Christine de Pizan (d.c. 1429) was an active proponent of peace on French soil throughout her literary career. The Italian-born author did not limit her appeals to theoretical treatises or mirrors for princes or even princesses, however. Her writing extended into the military realm in a text that blended the theoretical with the practical, addressing the concept of just war; material concerns like the provisioning of strongholds; and questions that would eventually form the basis of international law, her Livre des fais d'armes et de la chevallerie (Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry) of 1410.
Quickly translated into English and reproduced early in both French and English print editions, the Fais d'armes was the military manual of its day—and beyond. Yet, modern scholarship on this important work has either tended to focus on the deletion of Christine's name from later versions or even to dismiss the text as a translation of the fourth-century Roman author Vegetius, rather than an innovative and highly nuanced treatise in its own right. What this paper proposes, therefore, is to examine Christine's treatment of those upon whom warfare had the greatest impact—soldiers and those in harm's way, particularly in the Fais d'armes—in order to provide a fuller picture of Christine's overarching political thought. An interdisciplinary approach informs my investigation.
Soldiers take center stage, for example, in one of the text's pervasive themes, the importance of properly planning and preparing for potential military conflict. Here, Christine emphasizes not only the importance of alleviating the financial burden placed upon the ragged and impoverished men-of-arms themselves, but also of easing relations between competing sectors of society in rural areas. Her argument is bolstered with detailed, up-to-date checklists of the foodstuffs, personnel, and other equipment required to feed an army and tend to their wounds, subjects completely lacking in other, contemporary or even ancient treatises on the art of war.
As I will show, Christine's Fais d'armes, focused on the troops, would serve the dual goal of educating a frivolous, young dauphin in the subtleties and rigors of military and political stewardship as well as the entire French army in the art and exigencies of war. In this way, her writing would also serve her ultimate goal: to help bring lasting peace to a France riven by civil war and the Hundred Years' War.