中世纪欧洲骑士 P2 - Knights_S01E02_For Fame and Honor.UMMU.NET

Since they never really died, they live on today. In movies, in video games, and in festivals. Knights. How did they survive ambushes, feuds, and sieges? How did they win in single combat? Or in major battles? Why did they fight in tournaments? And what made them a legend? Waves and water, knights and horses. How well did they go together? Heinrich von Neufen was one of many knights who entrusted their lives to the belly of a ship. He knew that many crusaders would not return from their quest to Jerusalem. He had left everything behind. A number of children's drawings from the Middle Ages, similar to this one, survive today. A crusade was the greatest challenge a knight could face. He was used to keeping his seat on a horse, not to keeping his footing on a swaying deck. The sixth crusade used new broad-beamed ships capable of transporting horses. But it was nothing like what Heinrich von Neufen had imagined. A knight was not born to the sea. At least the horses couldn't get seasick. Thanks to a sphincter muscle above the esophagus, the crusaders were at sea for five long weeks, braving severe weather, pirates and illness. Heinrich had taken the cross with the Pope's blessing. Rather than make a dangerous overland journey of 3,000 kilometers, the knights of the sixth crusade sailed from Brindisi in southern Italy in June 1228. Earlier expeditions had used galleys, which had to be rowed from one harbor to the next. The ships of the sixth crusade used Arab compasses for navigation and were able to make way on the high seas day and night. Each ship carried 40 knights and up to a hundred horses. How did they get the horses off the ships? There was a gate in the stern, just like in modern roll-on roll-off ferries. The gate was raised and the knights simply mounted their horses and rode ashore. Allied landing craft used similar principles in the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had raised a large fleet for the sixth crusade. Fifty ships carrying 800 knights and 3,000 foot soldiers landed in the port of Acre, gateway to the Holy Land. Heinrich survived the dangerous voyage. After weeks of darkness, hunger, thirst and inactivity, he was finally able to set foot on solid ground. Pope Urban II had promised that all who died while on crusade would receive immediate remission of their sins. In 1228, Jerusalem was ruled by the Seljuk Turks, who had stopped Christian pilgrims from visiting the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional tomb of Christ. The Emperor Frederick was determined to re-establish free access to Jerusalem. A crusade was a religious war against the vile race of infidels, as Pope Urban put it. The laws of chivalry did not apply to them. Many knights also went on crusade in the Holy Land for the love of God, the Lord of hosts. They saw themselves as holy warriors. Was renewed bloodshed inevitable? Was there no other way? Frederick was above all a politician. He wanted to negotiate. The mere attempt was an outrage in the eyes of the Pope and not only in his. Let those who have been robbers now become knights. So said Pope Urban when summoning Europe to the first crusade in 1095. It was a stroke of genius on Urban's part to come up with the concept of the Knights were no longer to war with each other, but against the Muslims. Again and again, Urban and his successors called upon knights from across Europe to join the crusades. Again and again, Jerusalem changed hands, falling now to the crusaders, now to the Muslims. Both sides saw themselves as holy warriors. Both were equally brutal. And while the Knights were fighting in foreign lands, often for years with no certainty that they'd ever return, life went on at home. The Knights Lady had to take his place, even if in courtly poetry, she was eternally waiting. So wrote the poet von Kurenberg. But in real life, there was little time for melancholy. The lady of the castle had to deal with its business. A lady might live without her husband for years on end, a situation not without its temptations. From this, the cult of courtly love was born. Courtly love made it a chivalrous virtue to court a lady from afar and pledge loyalty only to her. The love songs in the famous illuminated manuscript known as the Codex Manessa specifically praised platonic or non-physical love. The lyric poet Walter von der Vogelweide claimed that physical or lowly love weakened the body and pained the soul. Yet it was difficult to distinguish courtly love from physical love. Wondering Minstrel sang of the dangerous pleasures of love found only outside marriage. Blessed be your red mouth. Blessed be your lovely body. Blessed be this sweet hour. People longed for love and passion then as they do now. And that is why the songs of courtly love were about love and pain, desire, seduction and fidelity. But what he wants, she cannot want. In one medieval love song, the lady replies, If I yielded, you would have fame, but I ridicule and shame. Woe to the lady led astray by a knight's honeyed words. It could mean her death. But men who had committed adultery were seldom punished. Quite the opposite. Knights loved bragging about their sexual conquests and adventures. The law, especially the church law, demanded marital fidelity, from women as well as from men. But the practice or reality looked quite different. If a woman had committed adultery, it was seen as a serious offense, even a crime, while the adultery of the man was largely tolerated. This is at least explainable from a pragmatic perspective, because a woman had above all the task of giving life to a legitimate heir. And the extra-marital sexuality would have jeopardized the legitimacy. For this reason, she was so unyieldingly brought to court with a wife-breaker. Crusader Heinrich von Neufen had been away from his wife and children for over a year. But he was lucky. Rather than waging war on the Saracen emir, Frederick negotiated a peaceful settlement. This was unusual, but not unheard of. In the 13th century epic Wilhelm, poet Wolfram von Eschenbach gives one example. He has the noblewoman Gieberg, a converted Muslim, give a famous speech on tolerance. And the Muslims, they are like her, creatures from God's hand. Not recognition, re-recognition. The author obviously wanted to present such ideas to his audience. But one can safely assume that it looked different in reality. So the idea that Gieberg announces here is quite extraordinary. None of the knights had expected that the 6th crusade would end peacefully. The 6th crusade was unique. The crusaders had set out to reconquer the Holy Land. But they entered Jerusalem wielding not fire and sword, but palm fronds and holy water. The figure of the Christian knight was born in the crusades. And in the 6th crusade, the knights did in fact adhere to Christian precepts. The peace with the Saracens held for more than 10 years. In this round, no Muslim and no crusader died fighting for Jerusalem. Heinrich von Neufen had done everything he could to secure his salvation. Whether by divine providence, as he would have said, or by sheer good fortune, after two long years he was able to return to his castle. As Eschenbach wrote, Like most travelers, the crusaders returned with gifts. Das? Das ist ein Öl. Aber, mein Sohn, ich habe etwas Besonderes für dich. Hörst du? Das Meer. Ja. Na und? Das hab ich nur für dich mitgebracht. Ja, schön. Danke. Ist das für mich? Klar. Ja! So weich. Kannst du es fühlen? Es ist Seide. Aus Jaffa. Heinrich had two daughters, but only one son and heir. Would that be enough to guarantee his line in dangerous times? A knight needed a second son, just in case. But it could also be about more than that. May God bring those together who want to be joined in love. Those lines referred more to the challenges of courtly love than to marriage. But the literary concept of courtly love came to influence actual marriage. It was still largely a matter of cementing power alliances. But what had commonly been a rough and ready act of procreation was no longer the only way. In the Middle Ages, tenderness was rediscovered. Men learned to treat women with courtesy and to behave in a chivalrous and gallant manner. Heinrich won honor and fame as a Christian knight and crusader. Another typical knight of the high Middle Ages was John of Bohemia. He could have followed his father as emperor, but he did not. And so I chose to become a knight and one of the best, he said. His banner read Ich Dien, I serve. More than most other knights of his time, he was in high demand as a warrior, a counselor and a supervisor in trial by combat. Court would order trial by combat if its judges were unable to reach a conclusion. The knights then had to establish the truth in a life and death struggle. Coffins were made ready. It was a definite advantage to be skilled in all the tricks of fighting without armor. But John would not allow a common brawl. A knight had to master all the techniques for close combat. That was the lesson Albrecht Dürer taught in his manual on grappling in a sword fight. Stand strong as shown in the drawing. Step behind him with your right foot and stab him. Dürer's manual remains a swordfighter's bible to this day. Any stroke was permitted in these duels, including hits to the neck and throat. Can these illustrations show a woman? They are from a manual by the fencing master Hans Talhofer, and they do indeed depict a woman wielding a slingshot against a man in trial by combat. Since it was held that a woman is only half a man, the man had to fight while standing in a hole up to his waist, an early example of positive discrimination. Then she caught his arm. Talhofer taught women to defend themselves against men. She grabbed him by his throat and by his member. Not very chivalrous, perhaps, but effective. Fights like this one were not very common, but they certainly happened. And then she pulled him from his hole. So the woman decided the trial by combat in her favor. Having prevailed, she won her case. A knight did not have to fight in a trial by combat in person. He could hire a professional fighter to represent him. Not a very glorious alternative, but permitted. The guilty party will succumb. God will cast his judgment through the stronger man's hand. That was the knight's view of law in the Middle Ages. Those who lost the fight but survived were brought before the court again, for had they not been proven guilty, depending on the severity of the charge, they might still be beheaded. But how likely was it that the wounded would survive? They were tended by barbers. They treated wounds with moldy bread. They had learned from experience that mold was able to prevent the onset of fatal gangrene. The antibacterial mold penicillin was only discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming. What about when knights lost body parts? The origins of plastic surgery go back to dueling. When the astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel, it was replaced with a golden prosthesis. Empty eye sockets were covered by so-called presentation eyes. There were no frilled models, but also beautiful eye inserts made from ivory and glass. And in a very early experiment in the mid-15th century, Antonio Branca used a flap of skin from his own upper arm to construct a new nose. The forerunner of all functional prosthetic arms was made in the early 16th century for Götz von Berlichingen. It is a masterpiece of precision engineering. It became the trademark of this marauding knight with the iron hand. Medieval blacksmiths labored to develop armor that would prevent the loss of limbs. By the late Middle Ages, chain mail was becoming old-fashioned. In Upper Austria, the Schmidberger family has made armor for 200 years across five generations. They craft every piece by hand. To give the armor sufficient strength, the metal is up to six millimeters thick. In the Middle Ages, a full suit of armor cost about 250 guilders, equivalent to at least two farms with all their laborers and animals. High quality armor was in great demand. A knight's life depended on his armor and his sword. A good sword is not to be taken lightly. We asked some experts to find out just what it is capable of. Andreas Kruger has studied medieval weapons and has taught himself to wield them, slashing and stabbing like a knight. Is a sword capable of slicing through a candle while it keeps burning, as we sometimes see in Hollywood movies? The experiment will be recorded by a high-speed camera running at 2500 frames per second. One thing is clear. A swordsman with a good eye could put out the lights. But the candle will only stay upright if it has been specially prepared. A test with a pumpkin shows that a good medieval sword was as sharp as a Japanese sushi knife. Here, a tightly rolled tatami mat stands in for an arm or a leg. The sword slices through it like butter. So a knight needed protection. Knights wore iron from head to toe to ward off sword blows and arrows. A full suit of armor comprised up to 150 individual parts. So some knights really were knights in shining armor, or in the case of the less fortunate, shabby armor. Armament and rearmament. The Middle Ages too had their arms races. And not only armor was upgraded, castles were too. Their masters tried to make them impregnable with tall towers and walls. After all, deterrence is the best defense. Ideally, the appearance of strength would be enough. John of Bohemia had been besieging castles since he was 14. He was not easily impressed. For a knight, the siege was all part of the day's work. It was how they acquired property and power. But what if they failed to take a castle with the first assault? What could they fall back on? Perhaps the engineers and siege engine specialists might come up with something. There were siege towers to overcome castle walls, and battering rams to breach gates. Medieval engineers invented a whole arsenal of siege engines to break down various forms of fortifications. The trebuchet was able to launch heavy rocks at walls up to 400 meters away. Only a few knights and men-at-arms were necessary to defend the castles. They were well protected behind battlements on high walls. But the attackers needed hundreds of knights, siege engines, and hundreds of ancillaries who had to be fed and paid for weeks or even months. Trebuchets had to be transported to the siege and operated by specialists. Rocks and arrows rained down from gatehouses on the operators of battering rams. A siege was no picnic. Siege towers up to 40 meters high could lower their drawbridges right onto a castle wall. But in the hand-to-hand fighting that followed, the defenders had a clear advantage. Climbing an assault ladder was a suicide mission. Most knights, however, could only dream of conducting a siege with a full range of siege engines and assault machines. In the end, all John could afford was the classic technique of undermining. The besiegers tunneled beneath the castle's walls and towers while hoping they would not run into an opponent's counter-tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, they excavated a chamber and stuffed it with whatever would burn well. Dry kindling was drenched in oil to boost the flames. Then they only had to wait for the walls and towers to collapse. Not very gallant, perhaps, but effective. An Italian military engineer of the 15th century, Histacola, even recommended that one should take animals, light them up with liquor or wax and then throw them into the city. So mice, cats, running around like wild animals and lighting everything up. So, in part, it was really, as far as animals and humans were concerned, a really, really violent story. Another brutal conflict. Edward III's invasion of France in 1346. King Philip of France asked for help from nobles all over Europe and many knights answered the call to save the French monarchy. John of Bohemia, one of the best, also wanted to do justice to his motto, I serve. He did not want to miss out on the fight against the English, even though, aged only 50, he had gone blind. He was called Blanayan, or John the Blind. 12,000 knights from the Holy Roman Empire, from Burgundy and from Spain, came to fight Edward's army. The armies met at Crecy, near Paris. John of Bohemia led 500 knights into the battle. On that day, which would go down in history, a storm was gathering. Not to be outdone. As far as I can see, there are only archers. And I had expected to fight honorable knights, and not peasants. God bless you! The knights left their horses to fight on foot. How unworthy of a true knight. There was also something else. Something the knights from the continent had not noticed. The battle commenced, but rather than fighting knight to knight, the English relied on technology. Cannon began as basic firepots with gunpowder and a fuse. They not only made a terrifying noise, but also fired a metal arrow up to 300 meters. Commanders soon recognized the advantages of cannon. But they were first used in a battle between knights at Crecy. Initially, their main effect was to sow terror by their sound. But that quickly changed. From about 1500, artillery became a recognized army branch. A fatal development for knights. As long-range weapons became more and more important, mounted knights faded away. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, it was the Prussian cannon that decided the key battle of Seddon. The English archers drew their longbows and sent an unbroken hail of arrows on the charging knights from the continent. And they found their target. Above all, they hit the horses, forcing the knights to fight on foot. The blind John of Bohemia had himself led into the thick of the battle. There he discovered the truth of Fogelweider's lament. World, for you I have a thousand times ventured body and soul. Now I see how you repay. All that you give me, you take from me again. How well did the armor of the knights at Crecy protect them from the English arrows? André Brennecker builds authentic replicas of medieval bows and arrows. With armor of steel plate, the knights were better protected than ever before. But it has been claimed that the English arrows, tipped with bodkins weighing 16 grams, were able to penetrate even full armor. This arrow only dents the four millimeter steel armor. But even the best armor has its weak points. New weapons and new tactics had made the knights' approach to warfare obsolete. By the evening of the 26th of August, 1346, the Battle of Crecy was over. The English had triumphed. It is said that King Edward remarked, here fell the flower of European chivalry, but the most valiant of all was John. The English knew him from the crest on his helmet and his coat of arms. After the battle, the Prince of Wales, Edward, the Black Prince, took the helmet and banner of the fallen John as trophies. He paid tribute to John's courage by adopting the three white ostrich feathers of his crest and his motto, I serve. They are still found on many British 2p coins. The figure of John the Blind became synonymous with both gallantry and blind loyalty till death. After the Battle of Crecy, large parts of France fell to England. Until 80 years later, a peasant girl called Joan had visions of heavenly figures in the chapel of the village of Domrémy. They told her to liberate France. Northern France was under English rule as far south as Orleans. Joan intended to change that and set out to Vaucouleur. In 1429, Joan cut off her hair, put on male clothing and took up a sword. Was she insane? Possessed by the devil? Or was she the virgin sent to liberate France as had been prophesied? The French believed she had been sent by God and followed her. The English generals thought it was a joke when a peasant girl in knight's armor declared war on them. But they would not laugh for long. Joan dared to do what the French king and his generals had not dared. Under her leadership, French soldiers rushed to take back Orleans from the English. On the 8th of May, 1429, she reconquered Orleans for France and her king. The maid of Orleans became a national heroine. The king ennobled her. From a base in Reims, where Charles was crowned king of France thanks to her efforts, Joan liberated one town after another. However, when she failed in a crucial assault on Paris, Charles withdrew his support. He preferred to stay in Paris. His maiden warrior had become much too powerful for his liking. And it was over. Joan was captured and sold to the English. She was tried in Rouen by the Inquisition. She was charged with wearing male clothing, with making a pact with the devil, and with heresy. But it was the fact that she had shown greater courage than those in power that guaranteed her death sentence. To the satisfaction of the English authorities, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen on the 30th of May, 1431. It was no help for this courageous young woman that she was later recognized as a saint and a symbol of the French nation. From a military perspective, the Battle of Cressy and the advent of artillery meant that the era of knights was nearing its end. But knights were glorified and idealized more than ever. Some became the stuff of legends. Among them, Goetz von Berlichingen, Goetz of the Iron Hand, who had lived by feuding and marauding. Tournaments became ever larger spectacles. Even emperors such as Maximilian, called Sir Steelheart for his many battles, broke a lance in the lists.