A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [88]
Since Jean’s object was to be inclusive rather than exclusive, he made the Order of the Star open to 500 members. Established “in honor of God, of our Lady and for the heightening of chivalry and augmenting of honor,” the full Order was to assemble once a year in a ceremonial banquet hung with the blazons of all its members. Companions were to wear a white tunic, a red or white surcoat embroidered with a gold star, a red hat, enameled ring of special design, black hose, and gilded shoes. They were to display a red banner strewn with stars and embroidered with an image of Our Lady.
At the annual banquet each would recite on oath all “the adventures that befell him in the year both shameful and honorable,” and clerks would take down the recitals in a book. The Order would designate the three princes, three bannerets, and three knights who during the year had done the most in arms of war, “for no deed of arms in peace shall be taken into account.” This meant no deed of private warfare as distinct from a war declared by the sovereign. Equally significant of the King’s intention was the reappearance of the oath not to withdraw, worded more sternly than in the ordinance and more explicitly than in the Order of the Garter. Companions of the Star were required, to swear they would never flee in battle more than four arpents (about 600 yards) by their own estimate, “but rather die or be taken prisoner.”
While the purpose behind the orders was practical, the form was already nostalgic. War had changed since the 12th century romances from which men knew the legends of the 6th century Round Table, if it ever existed. The legends had shaped chivalry as the principle of order of the warrior class “without which the world would be a confused thing.” But the quest of the Holy Grail was not an adequate guide to realistic tactics.
Chivalry’s finest military expression in contemporary eyes was the famous Combat of the Thirty in 1351. An action of the perennial conflict in Brittany, it began with a challenge to single combat issued by Robert de Beaumanoir, a noble Breton on the French side, to his opponent Bramborough of the Anglo-Breton party. When their partisans clamored to join, a combat of thirty on each side was agreed upon. Terms were arranged, the site was chosen, and after participants heard mass and exchanged courtesies, the fight commenced. With swords, bear-spears, daggers, and axes, they fought savagely until four on the French side and two on the English were slain and a recess was called. Bleeding and exhausted, Beaumanoir called for a drink, eliciting the era’s most memorable reply: “Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir, and thy thirst will pass!” Resuming, the combatants fought until the French side prevailed and every one of the survivors on either side was wounded. Bramborough and eight of his party were killed, the rest taken prisoner and held for ransom.
In the wide discussion the affair aroused, “some held it as a very poor thing and others as a very swaggering business,” with the admirers dominating. The combat was celebrated in verse, painting, tapestry, and in a memorial stone erected on the site. More than twenty years later Froissart noticed a scarred survivor at the table of Charles V, where he was honored above all others. He told the ever-inquiring chronicler that he owed his great favor with the King to his having been one of the Thirty. The renown and honor the fight earned reflected the knight’s nostalgic vision of what battle should be. While he practiced the warfare of havoc and pillage, he clung to the image of himself as Sir Lancelot.
With dazzling munificence, regardless of depleted finances, Jean launched the Order of the Star at an opening ceremony on January 6, 1352. He donated all the robes and staged a magnificent banquet in a hall draped with tapestries and hangings