The Song of Bertrand du Guesclin
Bertrand du Guesclin is one of the great French heroes of the Hundred Years War, his story every bit as remarkable as Joan of Arcs. The son of a minor Breton noble, he rose in the 1360s and 70s to become the Constable of France- a supreme military position, outranking even the princes of the blood royal. Through campaigns ranging from Brittany to Castile he achieved not only fame as a pre-eminent leader of Charles Vs armies, but a dukedom in Spain, burial among the kings of France in the royal basilica at Saint-Denis, and recognition as nothing less than the Tenth Worthy, being ranked alongside the nine paragons of chivalry who included Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and King Arthur.
His is a truly spectacular story. And the image of Bertrand, and many of the key events in his extraordinary life, are essentially derived from The Song of Bertrand du Guesclin, this epic poem by Cuvelier. Written in the verse-form and manner of a chanson de geste, it is the very last of the Old French epics and an outstanding example of the roman chevaleresque. It is a fascinating and major primary source for historians of chivalry and of a critical period in the Hundred Years War. This is its first translation into English.
Cuvelier is a fine storyteller: his depictions of battle and siege are vivid and thrilling, offering invaluableinsights into medieval warfare. And he is a compelling propagandist, seeking through his story of Bertrand to restore the prestige of French chivalry after the disastrous defeat at Poitiers and the chaos that followed, and seeking, too, to inspire devotion to the kingdom of France and to the fleur-de-lis.
Nigel Bryant is well known for his lively and accurate versions of medieval French authors. His translations of Chrtien de Troyes Percevaland all its continuations and of the extraordinary late Arthurian romance Perceforest have been major achievements; he has also translated Jean le Bels history of the early stages of the Hundred Years War, and the biography of William Marshal.
Also by Nigel Bryant
The High Book of the Grail:
A Translation of the Thirteenth-century Romance of Perlesvaus
The Complete Story of the Grail: Chrtien de Troyes Perceval and its Continuations
Merlin and the Grail
The Legend of the Grail
Perceforest
The True Chronicles of Jean le Bel
The History of William Marshal
The Medieval Romance of Alexander
Nigel Bryant 2019
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First published 2019
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
This edition published 2019
ISBN 978 1 78327 227 3 Hardback
ISBN 978 1 78744 625 0 Ebook
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Map 1: France
Map 2: Brittany and the Cotentin
Map 3: Poitou
Introduction
Bertrand du Guesclin is one of the great French heroes of the Hundred Years War. His career may have developed more slowly than that of the meteoric Joan of Arc whose fame and myth have overtaken his own, but it lasted much longer, and his story is every bit as remarkable.
The son of an obscure and minor Breton noble, he rose in the 1360s and 1370s to become the Constable of France a supreme military position: it outranked even the princes of the blood royal, and had always been the exclusive preserve of the princes themselves or the greatest magnates. He was unlettered, he was knighted late, he was defeated, captured and ransomed more than once; but through campaigns ranging from Brittany to Castile he achieved not only fame as a pre-eminent leader of Charles Vs armies, but a dukedom in Spain, burial among the kings of France in the royal basilica at Saint-Denis, and recognition as nothing less than the Tenth Worthy, being ranked alongside the nine paragons of chivalry who included Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and King Arthur.
His is a truly spectacular story. And the image of Bertrand, and many of the key events in his extraordinary life, are best known and have been essentially derived from The Song of Bertrand du Guesclin , this epic poem by the otherwise unknown Cuvelier. Commissioned (presumably, but we dont know by whom) and written immediately after Bertrands death in 1380, it was extremely successful: seven manuscripts have survived of Cuveliers original version composed in verse, which has been translated here; even more survive of the prose redaction produced in 1387, some five years or so after the verse;
But the poem itself has been largely ignored or disparaged. Written in the form and to an extent the manner of a chanson de geste (a medieval French epic poem in laisses stanzas of unequal length, each featuring a single rhyme), it weighs in at more than six times the length of the famous Song of Roland , which makes it less than immediately appealing given that Cuvelier is not exactly a natural: his verse is often inelegant, many lines being clumsy or padded with filler words and phrases for the sake of completing rhymes and the requisite number of beats (six). And beyond his sometimes awkward style he is criticised for his mythologising and idealising of Bertrand, for overstating Bertrands involvement in major events and decisions, for conveniently ignoring his less worthy actions, for having little sense of geography or chronology. All of these criticisms are undeniable.
