The first observations will be etymological. A significant shift in meaning concerning the wordsbrigand,pillarandsaquemantook place concurrently towards the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century.6 The three terms initially referred to common soldiers in the fourteenth century. The brigand was then a foot-soldier whose characteristic personal armour was the metal waistcoat, called brigandine. In the same period, the pillar
designated a common soldier in the knight’s retinue in France and the saqueman was his
Italian homologue. Very quickly, all three categories of soldiers were associated with their continual misconduct toward civilians and gave their name to their crimes: brigand and brigandage (coming from brigand), pillager and pillaging (coming from pillar) and sack or
5
It is indeed widely acknowledged that, in the words of Benedicta Rowe, ‘the distinction between open enemies and rebellious subjects, between prisoners-of-war and brigands, was well understood both by the soldiers and the people’. This idea, built upon a couple of documents which will be further investigated later on, has not been questioned in the most recent studies. B. J. H. Rowe, ‘John Duke of Bedford and the Norman “Brigands”’,
E.H.R., 47 (1932), 583-600, at p. 594; D. Goulay, ‘La résistance à l’occupant anglais en Haute-Normandie (1435-1444)’, Annales de Normandie, 36 (1986), 37-55, 91-104, at p. 52 ; Evans, ‘Brigandage’, p. 105; V. Challet, ‘Tuchins et brigands des bois’, p. 143.
6About the etymology of brigand and pillager, see F. Godefroy,Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et
de tous ses dialectes du IXe eu XVe siècles, 10 vol., Paris, 1881-1902, i. 733, x. 338-9; Rowe, ‘John Duke of Bedford’, p. 585 ; R. Jouet, La résistance à l’occupation anglaise en Basse-Normandie (1418-1450), Caen, 1969. p. 18; N.A.R. Wright, ‘”Pillagers” and “brigands” in the Hundred Years War’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983), 15-24, at pp. 17-9. Concerning saquemans, see W. von Wartburg, Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vol., Basel, 1928-70, xvii. 7-8.
ransack (coming from saqueman). However, the terms still identified the soldiers into the fifteenth century. Philippe Contamine remarks, for instance, that the military unit which formed the lance in Lombardy in 1422 included one man-at-arms, one page and one varlet or saqueman with horses.7 More importantly, we also find these saquemans in the service of the French king in 1426.8 However, by that time, these three types of foot soldiers (the brigand, the pillar and the saqueman) had already been clearly associated more generally with widespread criminal activities irrespective of the perpetrator. As a result, the three terms would more commonly be used to name individuals who devoted themselves to pillaging, murdering and robbery. Beyond its testimony to the ravages of the war and the general indiscipline of the soldiery in the Hundred Years War, this shift in meaning in the first half of the fifteenth century also shows how close the two worlds of the soldier and the brigand were.
There are no specific attributes of the brigands or perhaps it would be clearer to say that brigands and soldiers shared similar attributes. Brigands were very often associated with the woods, whence they perpetrated their infamous activities. There is however no need to demonstrate that soldiers very often operated in the woods as well.9Rather than an attribute of the brigands, the woods are, in fact, an attribute of guerrilla warfare. The organisation of bands of brigands, which were composed of some twenty members, united by an oath of allegiance given to a captain and sharing out the spoils of war, was also very similar to the
soldiers’ ‘compagnies d’aventures’, as described by Philippe Contamine.10 According to
Vincent Challet, it is the contact with the soldiers which is likely to have influenced the behaviour of those non-combatants, victims of their depredations. In his opinion, they modelled their organisation in bands on the soldier’s companies in order to fight against
them.11 Against this laborious theory, one might simply explain this parallel in the
organisation of the bands by the fact that soldiers and brigands did mix. And there is clear evidence of this. Several letters of remission unveil close links between a band of brigands
7
Contamine,Guerre, État, pp. 244-5.
8On 27 July 1426, receipt for the wages of 100 saquemans, who served the king of France during four monthsen
ses guerres es marches de France. BN, Coll. Clairambault, 136, no. 5. See also BN, PO 1516, Hermentier, 2 (1426, February 18), PO 20, Albret, no. 3 (1426, August).
9
Olivier du Guesclin, for instance, was spotted and captured in the woods near Cherbourg. Given-Wilson, ‘The ransom of Olivier du Guesclin’, p. 18. Several letters of remission mentioned French garrisons operating in the Norman woods.Actes, i. 116-7, 130. The English government itself enjoined its Norman subjects to hide and set ambushes to the French army which threatened to raid on the Cotentin in 1436.Chronique du Mont-St-Michel, ii. 77-8, no. 182 (1436, March 28).
10P. Contamine, ‘Les compagnies d’aventure en France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans’,Mélanges de l’Ecole
française de Rome. Moyen Age, Temps modernes, 87 (1975), 365-96 ; reprint in hisLa France au XIVe et XVe siècles. Hommes, mentalités, guerre et paix, Londres, 1981, VII.
11
and the French garrison of Ivry in 1423 and 1424.12 Another letter shows Guillaume de Brévédent, a well-known captain of brigands, interacting with the French garrison of Le Mans around the same period.13
The story of the notorious captain of brigands, Guillaume Hallé, goes even further than witnessing the interpenetration of the two worlds of brigands and soldiers, as it literally breaks the social barrier which separates them.14 Hallé, who was initially a member of the French garrison of Nogent-le-Rotrou, was captured on a foray in the mid 1420s. He had ransomed himself in the normal way, but instead of going back to Nogent, had chosen to return to his native district around the woods of Bec-Hellouin, where he joined his friends, other members of the garrison of Nogent. Together, they formed the nucleus of a notorious troop of brigands. In Rowe’s interpretation, this shift from soldiers to brigands was a one-way move. There is however no firm evidence that Hallé totally severed his links with his initial garrison. The worlds of the non-combatant, the brigand and the soldier were likely to have been much more permeable than has been previously suggested. If one single example should be quoted here it is that of Robin Desloges. Initially a labourer at Goderville, he successively became a brigand, then a soldier in the garrison of Ivry and ultimately returned to his work as a labourer, according to his letter of remission.15 Also, there is plenty of evidence of non- combatants who joined the French garrisons or the brigands.16