Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (WARFARE IN HISTORY)

Examining the soldier-peasant relationship in the context of the Hundred Years War, this work draws on the late-medieval literature of chivalry and political commentary in England and, especially, France. 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. The book also offers a description, based on additional documentary material which includes the largely unpublished records of the French royal chancery, of the ways in which individual peasants and village communities were exploited by soldiers, and how, in order to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.