The recent film "The Final Duel" has received a lot of praise (Douban score 8.4), the film tells the absurd story of medieval knights in the form of duels to determine responsibility and defend their glory. The film's equipment, life, and battle scenes of medieval knights are meticulously restored.
(Above) Stills from the film The Last Duel
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Europe was torn apart, and a great power arose in Western Europe, the Frankish Kingdom established by the Germanic Franks. The chivalry of Europe was perfected by this country.
For the knights of the Middle Ages, their cultural values were flesh and blood linked to Catholic religious beliefs. The Frankish kingdom spared no effort to promote Catholicism, especially Charlemagne, who worked so hard to popularize Catholicism in the Germanic world, and his remains were placed in the Aachen Cathedral after his death. The Church believed that secular knights should have the qualities of loyalty, because knighthood to lords was ultimately equal to loyalty to God.
A knight, as the name suggests, is a warrior who fights on horseback. However, knights were not equal to ordinary cavalry, because knights were closely linked to the feudal system practiced by the Frankish kingdom, so they generally had the status of nobility. In the impression of ordinary people, the nobility always lived a life of pampering. But the life of a knight is full of swords and lights. Knights who lived a accustomed military life were mainly associated with the nobility because of a feudal system of caiyi.
The caiyi system was tried to be implemented by the Frankish kingdom, which entered the feudal society, from about the middle of the 8th century. Due to the fragmentation of Europe at that time and the underdeveloped commodity economy, the Frankish king did not have enough money to pay his subjects on time, so he simply divided the land among his subjects as remuneration, thus forming the famous system of caiyi. The typical system of quarrying was pyramidal, where the king, as the largest lord, gave the land to the duke or earl, who in turn divided his land among his viscounts or barons, who could also divide the land among their vassals according to the same principle.
With the popularization of the caiyi system, many peasants were sealed together with the land and thus became serfs. Over time, almost all of the caiyi became the hereditary territory of the enfeoffed.
In the Middle Ages, whoever was granted land was tantamount to stepping into the threshold of nobility. Because the land under the feudal system was aristocratic and could not be sold to the commoners at will. The nobles lived a subsistence pastoral life in hereditary fiefdoms and were loyal to their lords for generations. Knights who served in the military service of lords were also granted land, and although many knights received small land from lords, they were associated with the nobility.
Each knight was required to bring his own weapons and food, including spears, swords, crossbows, shields, armor, and at least one horse. Before the revival of the old cities of the Roman Empire in the 10th and 11th centuries, the necessary equipment for knights was difficult to buy from the city, that is, the weapons of the feudal army were mainly made by self-sufficient feudal manors (the larger manors had craftsmen who knew how to make various types of weapons).
During Charles's reign (768-814), the Frankish kingdom actively pursued a policy of military expansion, waged more than fifty wars, fought against the Saxons between the Rhine and the Elbe Valley, conquered the Kingdom of Lombard in present-day northern Italy, and crossed the Pyrenees to control the lands of present-day northeastern Spain.
The system of military mining became popular with the expansion of the Frankish kingdom, and Charles was honored with the honorific title of "Charlemagne" for his great achievements in the war.
After the death of Chari the Great, his descendants fought for power and profit, splitting the country into several parts. Among them, the land west of the Zurd and Thorn rivers is called the West Frankish Kingdom, which became the prototype of France; the so-called East Frankish Kingdom east of the Rhine River became the prototype of Germany; and the land of the Apennine Peninsula, located between the East and West Frankish Kingdoms, became the prototype of Italy. At that time, Europe was in a state of feudal division, and feudal lords of all sizes flaunted their might everywhere. In 1066, the Duke of Normandy of France led an army across the Straits, invaded the British Isles, and became King of England.
Before the 12th century, France was in a state of feudal division, with nobles large and small calling for wind and rain in their own territories, and some could even make laws at will and mint coins to control the local economy and trade. The king's power was limited, and the size of his territory was not even larger than that of some large feudal lords. But the French chivalry was regarded as the most typical chivalric system, where the lord and the vassal were in a one-line connection, and there was a famous proverb at the time, "The vassal of my vassal, not my vassal", indicating that the vassal was normally responsible only to his direct lord.
Knights are nobles, but not all nobles are knights. It's easy to understand, how can some people with poor mental quality, unresponsiveness or physical defects go to war? Therefore, if the nobles want to become knights, they often have to train for a long time from a young age and have excellent performances in order to achieve their wishes.
The children of nobles who aspire to become knights must begin to receive training in swordsmanship and riding from the age of six or seven. They even had to leave their homeland and live in their father's castle as a vassal, serving the lord's family while continuing to learn military skills. In the Middle Ages, it had become common practice for vassals to send their young sons to their lords as vassals, which further strengthened the master-slave relationship between the two sides.
The ceremony of conferring swords was an indispensable procedure for a lord to canonize a knight. Children of the nobility may be canonized from the age of fifteen, and the age of canonization is generally not more than twenty-five years old. There are several kinds of sword-granting ceremonies, and their common feature is that the priest or lord symbolically presents a sword to the new knight at the conferment ceremony, and then solemnly recites the basic principles of the knights such as punishing evil and promoting good, hoping that the new knight will remember it. Peacetime sword-granting ceremonies often end after a grand banquet. Some of the sons of nobles who fell into the middle of the family could not afford the expensive cost of the sword-granting ceremony, so it was difficult for them to become official knights for the rest of their lives. When a young nobleman becomes a knight, he swears allegiance to the lord, thus establishing a master-subordinate relationship between the two sides.
Loyalty was seen as a good quality for knights, and if any knight lived and died with his lord on the battlefield, he would be praised. And as a lord, you should also have the virtue of generosity, and you must always give some wealth to your subordinates, otherwise you will lose the support of your subordinates because of miserliness.
Lords and vassals, for their own personal interests, would pay attention to cultivating a personal relationship between them. The aforementioned vassals sent their young sons to the lords as vassals is a good example. There have also been groups with blood relations within the knight group for a long time, and it is also common for fathers to become lords of several sons. However, in medieval Europe, there was also a phenomenon of double or even multiple allegiances, that is, a vassal swore allegiance to two or more lords at the same time, and in the event of a conflict between the lords, the vassal would fall into an embarrassing situation.
Knights' important duties to lords were military service, deliberation, and the administration of territory, among which military service was the knight's own job, mainly including participation in field battles and guarding castles. Vassals are required to perform not less than forty days of military service for the lord each year, and if the vassal needs to serve for an extended period of time, additional remuneration shall be paid. When knights have difficulty serving as lords, they can also pay money and have the lord hire someone to serve them. Proxy money is also known as "shield money". By the end of the 12th century, hired knights who received salaries from lords were already common in France, England, Germany and other places.
In medieval Europe, there were castles of all sizes in the territories of kings and nobles such as dukes, princes, uncles, sons, and barons, which were used to prevent the rapid assault of cavalry. Many castles were built on dangerous places and major transportation routes to facilitate the feudal lords to collect taxes on the merchants who traveled by, and they sometimes even became the strongholds of some illegal feudal lords.
Banquets are often held in the castle, so the days are less monotonous. In ancient times, a large amount of food meant great strength, so whether or not a knight could eat and drink became a measure of a knight's ability. Some wealthy aristocratic families would take advantage of the fact that their children could be knights or marry to hold grand banquets, which were accompanied by bands, drama classes, and bards who came from afar to help.
Folk bards like to go around singing epic poems that glorify heroic figures. The heroic deeds of the poets were later written into words and published as books, among which the famous ones were the French "Song of Roland", the Spanish "Song of the Cid", the German "Song of the Nibelungen", etc., which formed chivalric literature.
Chivalric literature has had a subtle influence on the thinking of real-life knights, especially young knights who always take pride in imitating the heroic characters in epics in their daily lives. It is said that william the conqueror, Duke of Normandy, france, at the Battle of Hastings during his conquest of England in 1066, asked bards to chant the Song of Roland before the battle began to boost the morale of the troopers.
The song of Roland is set at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries, and tells that the French general Roland followed Charlemagne on his expedition to Spain and accidentally fell under siege during a battle with the armies of the Kingdom of Zaragoza on the Spanish peninsula. Roland, who was loyal to the lord, for the sake of honor, would rather die on the battlefield than resolutely agree to the trumpet of reinforcements from his subordinates, and in the end they were outnumbered and all martyred.
Knights often line up in dense formations to charge in a sea of waves when fighting, and they also like to fight alone. During the Hundred Years' War between England and France, King Henry V of England openly proposed a duel with the Crown Prince of France, and whoever won would have French territory, but there was no response from the other side.
Knights who like to fight alone are equivalent to using the battlefield as an arena, and the attraction of the tournament held in peacetime to the knights is second only to war. The tournament originated in France, its influence quickly expanded abroad, the popular British "Death of King Arthur" and Spain's "Song of the Cid" and other knightly literature have a lot of depictions of the scene of the biwu scene, which undoubtedly played a role in promoting the promotion of the violin congress. In this way, by the 11th century, the contest had swept all over Western Europe. The assembly was usually hosted by princes and nobles, and the knights from different regions conducted simulated battles, who were heavily armed and fought each other in two parts under the crowds of people, often causing casualties. At the beginning, there were no rules to speak of, just a large group of people fighting in a scuffle, but after development, it became much more standardized, both one-on-one fighting and queue combat. In addition to horse combat, there are also infantry battles, and the referee is also on the scene.
The most common way for knights to participate in the competition is to hold a shield in one hand, and with the other hand, hold a heavy spear under the armpit and aim at the opponent's key points, using the moment when two warhorses intersect to kill the enemy. Spears often break in fierce confrontation, so it is believed that the more a knight breaks his spear, the more courageous and good he is. Knights draw their swords when their spears are broken in two, and crossbows are often overlooked by knights who value close combat. The Catholic Church even issued a decree in 1139 prohibiting the crossbow (a commonly used name for the crossbow) among Christians, but it could be used against pagans. This is also the earliest example of human restriction of weapons.
The winners of the contest are generally divided by the number of points they hit, the winner has a bounty and souvenirs, and the knight who becomes a prisoner of the victor due to defeat in the contest also needs to pay a ransom to the winner. Some skilled knights used tournaments to capture captives in order to earn ransoms.
One of the important differences between jousting and war is that it has a large audience, including bards and noble ladies, which makes the brave deeds of the knights easier to be praised by onlookers, thus making the knights famous in the world.
This article is excerpted from the revised edition of The Mightiest Warriors