3.2. RITUALIZED WARFARE, A WAY TO CANCEL WEALTH

3.2. RITUAL WAR CANCELS WEALTH    

FIGHTING DRAWS OFF PEASANT SURPLUS AND THE TREASURE OF NOBLES AND KINGS 

The martial emphasis is part of nobles' domination, but trappings use up income and destruction is limited in practice.

The Book of Tournaments of René d'Anjou, 15th century / zoom

     Kanem cavalry, Black History Studies / zoom

In brief

• Limits to traditional wars and raids

• European warfare had comparable limits

• Valor: nobles react to nascent capitalists

• Did memory of feudal valor add to the carnage of World War I?

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Next,

3.2.1.

 Limits to traditional wars and raids

3.2.1. LIMITS OF TRADITIONAL WARS AND RAIDS

Full account, Aubin, pp. 487-90

THE ANNUAL DRY-SEASON RAIDS SOUGHT ONLY THE NUMBER OF CAPTIVES THAT ELITES COULD USE, SINCE A SURPLUS WOULD HAVE TO BE MAINTAINED OR SOLD

If the latter independent producers would buy them, and increase their labor force, production, sales and threat.

• Captives were mainly women and children:

In what is now Mali, 1892 / zoom

Drawings of captives show mainly women, this one with a child in the background.

• The army of Bornu (in northeastern Nigeria) killed male prisoners by cutting off a leg. 

The explorer Heinrich Barth, who accompanied the expedition, mentions those killings without comment.

-- .Narrative of a voyage in North and Central Africa, 1855, II, pp. 324-86.

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Captures were braked by..

• Crowds that accompanied armies between the Niger and Ethiopia. Bivouacs represented palace, capital and kingdom, or the head, hands and feet of the king.

  -- Aubin, p. 487; references, n.198.

Marshal Bugeaud during the Conquest of Algeria by Horace Vernet, 1846 / zoom

The tents in the background recall the hierarchy of royal camps in the African savannah.

• Attacking villages from one side only (in Cayor, Senegal), allowing flight and sparing harvests. 

 -- De la Sénégambie français by F. Carrère et P. Jolle, 1855, p. 70.

• Ritual 

• The Ashanti (Ghana) considered only one day in three propitious for war. They halted an advance that threatened the English to avoid fighting on an unfavorable day. 

-- Emmanuel Terray, "La captivité dans le royaume abron du Gyaman"

 in L'Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, ed. Claude Meillassoux, 1975, p. 325

. 

• In Senegambia, adversaries advanced "in a kind of parade," shooting and retiring to reload, each in turn.

                                                                                                                       -- Carrère and Jolle (above), p. 70.

Dahomey fighters go to war in a procession that the king leads.   Armed Women going to War, with the King at their Head, "History of  Dahomey » by Archibald Dalzel, 1793 / zoom *     * Use of horses Nobles used them for prestige, for show, for individual exploits, to tower over foot soldiers — or to flee. Zoom The man on foot is holding his own. Should victory matter, they might fight on foot —  Galla (in Ethiopia) dismounted, "fought desperately for their lives" and won ; Mossi (in Burkina Faso) came to the battlefield riding asses, three fighters to an ass, dismounted and won. -- Galla, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile by James Bruce, 1791, III, p. 233  Mossi, Dakar archives, 1 p.89  More examples in Aubin p. 486, n.1 97  Voyage au Soudan français (Haut-Niger et pays de Ségou en 1879-81) by the Commander Gallieni The fête contrasts horsemen's spectacle with foot soldiers' discipline. Use of guns Bullets from "trade guns," made in Birmingham on African demand, did not pierce wooden shields, or even a European officer's uniform when shot from 20 yards. Throwing stones worked better. -- Wooden shields, uniform: Voyage en Afrique occidentale by A. Raffenel, 1846, I, 28 -- Stones: Travels and Discoveries in North Central Africa by H. Barth, 1865 ed., II, 393 Comments similar to these appear for the whole savannah belt until the end of the 19th century: Aubin pp. 487-9, n.195-199 A dandy and a farmer treat guns as accessories :

Gallieni  

• Like horses, muskets could be cast aside when victory counted: In Nigeria, Oyo troops overcame those of Ibadan by throwing away their guns and charging with sabres.

-- History of the Yoruba by Samuel Johnson, 1924, p. 24.

• When efficiency counted, traditional ways returned: A hunter shot five arrows in succession with such speed and precision that several seemed to strike the target at the same time.

-- Revue coloniale by H. Héquard, 1852, 2nd series, IX, p. 342

*    *

Martial show reinforced the ruler and guns' smoke and fracas fit in:

Mossi king (in Burkino Fasso) with his cavalry, 1892.

 

     Second Visit to Discover the Sources of the Nile by John Speke,1864

Gallieni account (above)

 Zoom

End of Ramadan in Bauchi (Northern Nigeria), 1973: same use.

*   *

But the raids themselves were not supposed

to succeed too well —

"We only want to keep you in your corner."

-- Noble raiders to producers of crops for market in Mauretania toward 1790,

L'Afrique et le peuple africain by M. Lamiral, 1789, p. 85.

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 Next,

3.2.2. 

European warfare had comparable limits

3.2.2. EUROPEAN WARFARE HAD COMPARABLE LIMITS

THERE TOO VIOLENCE DESTROYS PEASANTS' SALEABLE SURPLUS AND STRENGTHENS HIERARCH

War

Hunting, reserved to nobles, limits peasant surplus by trampling fields. It is a prelude to fighting, where after wasting their own revenues on horses and show, high-born opponents feast and intermarry.

Count Geoffrey's great pleasure is hunting. In chasing his prey, he tramples peasants' harvests.

 -- 1950's schoolbook

 "The great occupation of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, is war. He often fights neighboring lords."

Controlled violence helps things stay as they are.

*    *

As in Africa crowds hamper army movement while emphasizing the king: 

• Here wealthy townsmen are present and the figure in black on the left is a woman:

Tapestry (detail) Renaissance Museum / Claude Abron

 

• Civilians do not accompany campaigns, which are not raids without danger for attackers but real combats, which allow exploits that win royal favor. But Louis XIV's court accompanies his visit to conquered towns (in 1667 and 1672). 

            The Royal Entry of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse in Arras in 1667 by Adam van der Meulen, toward 1685 / zoom

The population comes to watch (notice also the king's white horses).

• Corteges are arranged with the same insistence on hierarchy as those of Africa, plus waste (which the brief accounts on Africa do not mention):

The king, who had traveled for war on horseback, now for the first time went by coach [...]. The queen, Madame his sister-in-law, the marquise de Montespan, splendidly surrounded, was followed by many others; [...] The dauphin came next with his court, Mademoiselle with her own [...]. The crown's most sumptuous furniture was carried to the towns where one slept.  

One found in each town a masked ball or fireworks. All the king's wartime household accompanied him and all his servants preceded or followed. Meals were like those at Saint-Germain [a palace]. The court visited all the conquered towns with that pomp. The main ladies of Brussels, of Ghent, came to see that magnificence; the king invited them to his table; he gave them presents of great gallantry. All officers of garrisoned troops received gratifications. It cost several times fifteen hundred gold louis by day in liberalities. 

-- Le siècle [century]de Louis XIV by Voltaire, ed. 2015, p. 436.

• Hierarchy: when Louise de la Vallière, the favorite whom the king was abandoning, joined him uninvited and rushed down the hill to meet him, he furiously cried, "What! You ride before the queen!" 

*     *

Fighting stops on holidays, which take up one day in three (for the Ashanti, two days in three). Attacking Paris on a saint's day is one of the reasons for condemning Joan of Arc.

*     *

Horses are used as in Africa. They add show, allow exploits and let nobles tower over the commoners who are much more likely to be wounded or killed:

Battle of Montecatini, Tuscany, 1315 /zoom

There too they are used for flight and horsemen dismount for victory. 

 -- In that way 12th-century English knights defeat their astounded opponents: 

The Pillars of the Earth, historical novel by Ken Follett, 1989

*     *

Arms can be for show, not combat:

Sixteenth-century weapons at the Louvre

Shield of Charles IX (toward 1560)

     Louis XII leaves to quell rebellion, 1507, by Jean Bourdichon, manuscript illuminator at court of France / zoom

*    *

Same idea

Northern Nigerian horseman, Presenta Barman, Instagram, no further information

*     *

Like martial spectacle in Africa,

chronicles, narratives and arts of the time
glorify a violence that
— except for civil wars

and Louis XIV's destruction of the Palatinate — 

was (informally) muzzled in practice.

*      *      *

 Next,

3.2.3.

Valor: Nobles react to nascent capitalists

3.2.3. VALOR: NOBLES REACT TO NASCENT CAPITALISTS

WHEN EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES LED TO A CAPITALISM THAT WAS MUCH MORE DYNAMIC, NOBLES FOUND NEW WAYS TO SHOW THEMSELVES SUPERIOR  

(FROM ABOUT 1500)

One was to associate themselves with heroes of mythology and antiquity. Another stressed their martial valor.*

*Fighting was their God-given function in a society where the population into three legal categories: the clergy to pray, commoners to work and nobles to fight.

They alone had the means to own horses and their battlefield exploits alone were considered heroic...

 A battle of the Spanish Reconquista, 1405 (painting a decade later) / zoom

The heroes are a king and a Crusader, backed by horsemen, who are nobles by definition. Helmets identify a line of foot soldiers, whose faces are not shown (as was the case for humble combattants generally. The faces of ordinary fighters do not appear until those at top of the Arc de Triomphe, which are deliberately hard-to-see).

They wear armor for their portraits:

Portrait of a Young General by Anthony van Dyck, 1624

The Count of Vaudreuil by François-Hubert Drouais, 1758 / zoom (the map is of Saint-Domingue, where he was a plantation owner and governor).

A combattant proudly brandishes his weapons over a château chimney, the most prestigious spot in a glacial salon:  

A salon of the Renaissance Museum / Claude Abron

The ideal this warrior expresses has nothing to do with tangible goals: 

Château d'Ecouen, museum publication

*    *

Dueling appears at the same time as emphasis on antiquity and valor. One throws away one's life as one does one's wealth, with panache: 

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Thédore Cahu, 1903

*     *

So nobles affirmed their superiority
over the prosaic, penny-pinching... 
and ascendant middle class.

*     *     * 

Next,

3.2.4. 

Did memory of feudal valor add to the carnage of World War I?