The Knight
A Portrait of Europe's Warrior Elite
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
An up-close introduction to the most admired warriors in history
"They mounted their horses, grasped the lances made of fine Bordeaux Steel, closed the visors of their helmets, and made their way to their stations for the first course. Spurring their horses on, they advanced toward each other at full gallop, lowering their lances as they approached. The tip of Clifford's lance caught Boucmel high on his breastplate and was deflected off . . . directly into the young squire's mail hood, piercing his neck clean through."
This tragic account of an ambitious young Frenchman's senseless death during a "friendly" joust with an English knight underscores the ever-present danger that stalked the flower of European youth in the Middle Ages. In The Knight, you'll meet John Boucmel, Nicholas Clifford, and scores of other warriors who risked their lives to fill the medieval lists and battlefields in a relentless quest for fame, glory, and victory.
This vivid, fast-paced narrative whisks you from the blood-soaked fields of Normandy in the Hundred Years' War to the battered walls of Jerusalem in the first Crusade, from a sumptuous feast in an English castle to the pomp and pageantry of a spectacular thirty-day jousting tournament. You'll discover how knights were trained; how they paid for their expensive weapons, armor, and horses; and how the solemn vows they took influenced their behavior both on and off the battlefield. Discover the truth behind the countless legends of the Age of Chivalry in The Knight.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Attempting to cover the entire history of the horseback fighter from the late Dark Ages to the Renaissance, Alan Baker (The Gladiator: The Secret History of Rome's Warrior Slaves) is forced to limit itself to selected high points in The Knight: A Portrait of Europe's Warrior Elite. A good part of the chapter on castles and siegecraft, for example, is devoted to a somewhat Anglocentric history of fortification in the British Isles, before providing a solid account of the classic siege of Chateau Gaillard in 1204. Similarly, the chapter called "The Fall of Jerusalem" does not go beyond the First Crusade-though the account is useful, as is the biography of Godfrey of Bouillion. The chapter on the knight's equipment is oversimplified (although many of the controversies covered could not be resolved in a six-volume work), but balancing this is the fine account of the tournament at St. Inglevert, in which most of those weapons were called into play without anyone being killed. Indeed, the real strength of the book is its rummaging out anecdotes about knightly prowess from chronicles not available in most libraries.
