The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry

A manual of war written by a woman in 1410, printed in Paris under a Roman author's name and in London under her own.

French, the original language

Original title: Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie
First published: 1410(aged 46)
Original language: French

Overview

Most French captains of 1410 could not read Latin, and the standard authority on war was a Latin book by the late Roman writer Vegetius. Christine de Pizan wrote for them in French. She takes what Vegetius says about choosing and training soldiers, marching, camping and siege, adds the ruses of war collected by the Roman authors Frontinus and Valerius Maximus, and brings the whole up to date, down to the gunpowder artillery needed to attack a fortress in her own day. Then the book changes subject, from how to fight to when fighting is lawful. Her source here is the Tree of Battles by Honoré Bovet, a Benedictine prior who had written on the law of arms in the 1380s; she presents him as a master who visits her in a dream and answers her questions. They cover who may declare war, what a captain owes his soldiers, what is owed to a prisoner or to the holder of a safe-conduct, and whether a student or a ploughman from the enemy's country may be seized. Her position is that war is lawful only when a sovereign prince wages it to obtain justice, and that people who take no part in it are not fair prizes. War, on this account, takes courage, but it is also a matter of law and method, and those can be taught. Twenty-two manuscripts of the book survive, and it reached print twice. Antoine Vérard, the Paris publisher, printed the book on 26 June 1488 as L'Art de chevalerie selon Vegece, and his edition is the text we hold. It does not mention her, as though the book were a translation of the Roman author. In England Henry VII handed a French manuscript to the printer William Caxton on 23 January 1489 and asked for an English version for his soldiers. Caxton printed it on 14 July, under her name.

Key concepts

What makes a war just in this book?

Three causes, and a sovereign prince to wage it. A war is lawful when it upholds right and justice, resists those who oppress the land and its people, or recovers territory wrongly taken. Two further motives are named and set apart as wars of will: revenge for an injury and the conquest of foreign lands. No baron may go to war on his own authority, whatever his grievance.

What is the Tree of Battles the dream master offers?

It is a tree in the master's garden, and its fruit is the law of arms. The image stands for Honoré Bovet's treatise of that name, from which the second half of the book takes its cases. Christine asks whether borrowing will be held against her, and the master answers that his pupils have always shared the flowers of his garden. Using another's material well is a merit, and only a bad fit is a fault.

What does the book mean by a ruse of war?

A ruse is any trick that misleads the enemy, and the book holds it lawful. Spies may go dressed as pilgrims or labourers, a general may march about aimlessly until the besieged grow careless, and the Roman collections supply dozens of such cases. The limit is the given word. What has been sworn or promised in writing must be kept even to an enemy, so the wording of a promise matters a great deal.

What is marque, and why is it called unjust?

Marque is a licence a king gives a subject who cannot get justice abroad: he may seize merchants and goods coming from the offender's country until he is repaid. The master in the dream rejects it. By the old law one man should not suffer loss for another's debt without having deserved it, and a Florentine wronged by one Parisian has no claim on the next Parisian he meets.

What is a safe-conduct in the law of arms?

A safe-conduct is a written promise from a lord that a named enemy may pass through his territory unharmed. The fourth part of the book tests how far such a letter binds, for example whether a knight allowed to travel with ten companions may bring a great lord as one of the ten. Christine remarks on how little faith is kept in her world, which is why she wants the letters read strictly.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

War as a craft that can be taught

Can a captain learn from a book what his fathers learned by surviving? The first half bets that victory belongs to method and foresight more than to numbers or daring.

Vegetius, Frontinus and Valerius Maximus are put into French for captains who had no Latin, and brought up to date with gunners and siege engines. The lesson running through the borrowed chapters is that armies are lost to hunger, bad ground and haste before they are lost to the enemy. A captain should take counsel, feed and pay his men, spare prisoners so that the enemy is not driven to despair, and use ruses freely. Courage is assumed; what the book adds is the planning that keeps it from being wasted.

military strategy
siege warfare
leadership
military leadership
military logistics
prudence
military training
military engineering
fortification
morale
courage
terrain
weapons
military tactics
military history
deception
defense

Enter a dialogue

When fighting is lawful, and against whom

Who may start a war, and who may be made to pay for it? The second half treats arms as a matter for judges, with cases argued on both sides.

Only a sovereign prince may make war, and only for three causes: to uphold justice, to resist oppressors, to recover what was usurped. Vengeance and conquest are wars of will, and vengeance belongs to God. A master seen in a dream, drawn from Honoré Bovet's Tree of Battles, then settles cases. An English student in Paris is no fair prisoner. Soldiers may take food on the march, but not like wolves. Peasants who give the war no help should be spared, though the innocent suffer with the rest. Trial by combat is condemned outright.

just war
justice
law
military ethics
war ethics
trial by combat
judicial combat
political authority
property
oaths
loyalty
diplomacy
war

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 388
distinct concepts: 464
by passages held, corpus-wide: #189

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “deception” and “military strategy”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 92 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
deception	military strategy	30
leadership	military strategy	25
military logistics	siege warfare	16
justice	war	12
military strategy	siege warfare	12
deception	leadership	10
deception	siege warfare	7
military logistics	military strategy	4
justice	leadership	3
justice	military leadership	3
leadership	military logistics	3
deception	military leadership	2
deception	war	2
military leadership	military logistics	2
military leadership	military strategy	2
military leadership	war	2
military strategy	war	2
deception	justice	1
deception	military logistics	1
leadership	siege warfare	1
military leadership	siege warfare	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1399 The God of Love's Letter (Épître au dieu d'Amours)
Her first long poem and her first defence of women, written in 1399. Its complaint returns in her letters on the Romance of the Rose and again in The Book of the City of Ladies.
FR
1402 Debate of the Romance of the Rose (Les Epistres du débat sus le Roman de la Rose)
Letters, gathered into a dossier by Christine herself in 1402 with her opponents' side included. They stand between the poem of 1399 that first attacked Jean de Meun and The Book of the City of Ladies of 1405.
FR
1404 Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V
A duke ordered this biography of the king in 1404. Her prose books of advice to princes came after it.
FR
1405 The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la cité des dames)
The book she is most read for today, finished by 1405. It gathers the arguments of her earlier poem and letters against Jean de Meun into a single allegory, and its three ladies return in the sequel.
EN
1405 The Treasure of the City of Ladies (Le trésor de la cité des dames de degré en degré et de tous estatz)
The sequel to The Book of the City of Ladies, finished the same year, 1405: the first book defends women by example, and this one tells them what to do. It was the more often printed of the two in the century after her death.
FR
1405 The Vision of Christine de Pizan (L'avision de Christine)
One of three books dated 1405, with The Book of the City of Ladies and its sequel, and the last of her allegories. It is the one in which she tells her own story.
FR
1410 The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie) you are here FR

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