Honour and the Sword
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Authors: A. L. Berridge
Honour and the Sword
A. L. BERRIDGE
MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
MICHAEL JOSEPH
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2010
Copyright © A. L. Berridge, 2010
Map artwork by Stuart James
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-194169-1
Contents
Acknowledgements
Editor’s Note
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Historical Note
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!
– from ‘A Hymn’ by G. K. Chesterton
Acknowledgements
I must apologize to the people of Picardy, not only for dumping my fictional Saillie smack in the middle of the Forest of Lucheux, but also for landing them with so tempestuous a son as André de Roland. I have tried to find names authentic to both place and period for my fictional characters, but if any of these appear to reflect badly on a genuine family of the time, then I apologize unreservedly to their descendants for a similarity which is both unintentional and coincidental. The real personages, however, are written as history shows them to have been, and require no apology from me.
Many of those I should thank most are long dead, for the best sources on seventeenth-century France remain the vast number of contemporary memoirs. I would still have been lost in this wealth of material without the guidance of many members of the Society for French Historical Studies, and in particular Robin Briggs (author of
Early Modern France 1560–1715
) and Dr David Parrott (author of
Richelieu’s Army
), whose generous personal help and encouragement I can only acknowledge with astonished gratitude. I am also much indebted to Ken Mondschein for advice on historical fencing, and to David Reid of the St Albans Fencing Club for guidance on practical aspects of the art. Thanks are due also to the many friends who helped with the different languages, and in particular Clare Cox, who polished the lyrics of ‘
Le Petit Oiseau
’. Anything impressive in this book is down to these experts; the mistakes are entirely my own.
I am also very grateful to those who gave invaluable feedback and advice in the actual writing, especially Julie Howley, Janet Berkeley, Michelle Lovric and Harry Bingham of The Writers’ Workshop, my agent Victoria Hobbs, and my editor Alex Clarke. Thanks also to Mervyn Ramsey and Laura Rawling for their inspiration and encouragement, and finally to my husband Paul Crichton, without whose faith and support
Honour and the Sword
would never have been written at all.
Editor’s Note
Even the dead can speak.
It is not from me the reader will learn the story of André de Roland, but from the recorded voices of those who actually knew him: a handful of letters, the memoirs of a parish priest, the journal of an adolescent girl, and the transcripts of interviews with a soldier, a merchant, a blacksmith, a tanner, and a stable boy. These interviews are the first in a series conducted by the young Abbé Fleuriot, and appear to be surprisingly frank. The reader should remember, however, that while it is possible for a speaker to reveal more than he knows, it is not only the living who can lie.
In order to render the oral material accessible to a modern reader, I have adopted an informal approach to the translation, and substituted modern English idioms for those of seventeenth-century Picardy. The content, however, is bound to remain alien. André de Roland was anachronistic even in his own times, genuinely believing ‘honour’ to be something which ought to affect his behaviour and play an integral part in his daily life. The reader will not need me to point out the danger of this, nor is that my responsibility. The dead may speak; it is the job of the historian only to see that they are heard.
Edward Morton, MA, LittD, Cambridge,
April 2010
