The 'Auld Alliance' by Margaret Skea

Some years ago the BBC ran an advert for the 6 Nations Rugby tournament which was pulled following some complaints, and then proceeded to go viral! The punchline was - 

 

‘It’s not who you want to win, but who you want to lose.’

 

No prizes for guessing the answers the Scots, Irish and Welsh fans gave. 

Clever – yes. Amusing – yes. And like all the best humour, based on a grain of truth. But from the Scots perspective at least, it has its roots in ancient history.

The United Kingdom has a common flag - the Union Jack, which symbolizes both the union of the crowns of 1603 and the union of parliaments in 1707. A union that, despite having been challenged in recent years, has nevertheless survived relatively unscathed for over 400 years. 

But Scotland had a prior alliance, with France, which has come to be known as the ‘Auld Alliance.’ It is one of the longest standing treaties in the world (more on that later). Renewed by successive monarchs it was based on a sense of a common enemy, and that enemy was England.

 

In 1579 David Chamber, one of the Lords of Council and Session at Edinburgh claimed that the Auld Alliance dated back to Philip I of France and Malcolm III of Scotland. If it did, no documentary evidence remains. 

 

The earliest extant record of the treaty is dated 23^rd October 1295 which John Balliol concluded with Philip the Fair. Balliol was technically only the Scottish King under the over-lordship of Edward I of England, so the terms of the treaty with France are somewhat surprising. It bound Scotland and France to provide mutual support in the event of war with England. 

                                                                         John Balliol 

An excerpt from the 1326 version of the treaty, between Charles IV of France and Robert I of Scotland, illustrates both the main terms and the tone of the treaty.

 

‘…a meet and necessary thing it is that princes should ally themselves together by bond of friendship and goodwill in order the grievances of those who desire to grieve them more forcibly to refrain; and the tranquility of them and of their subjects more peaceably to secure…with the noble prince Robert, by the grace of God King of Scotland our special friend, against the King of England, whose predecessors have often labored to aggrieve the said kingdoms of France and Scotland in many and sundry ways…’ 

 

Even more strikingly there was provision for what should happen in the event of either country making peace with England –

 

‘…if our kingdom shall make peace or truce with the king of England…the King of Scotland, his heirs shall be excepted; so that such peace shall be null whenever war is waged between the aforesaid kings of Scotland and England  …France shall be bound to make war upon the kingdom of England with all their force…firmly to observe, faithfully to perform and fully to accomplish.’  (Ditto in reverse.)

 

No wriggle room there then! The treaty was renewed at least 12 times between 1295 and 1543 and many of the original documents survive among the charters of France. They can be accessed via an inventory, catalogued by a M. du Tillet and printed in folio in 1588. One significant effect of this on-going treaty was a succession of contracts of marriage, beginning in 1235 with Edward Balliol (son of King John) to Joan, niece of the French King; with the most famous being the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin Francis in 1558.

Mary Queen of Scots and Dauphin Francois

While the treaty was mutually beneficial, it does seem that the balance fell in favour of the French, with Scotland regularly providing troops, sometimes in very significant numbers, to aid the French in their wars with England, both on French and on English soil. 

There were notable wins for the Scots – in 1420 they defeated the English at Beange; but notable losses also – in 1326, following the French defeat at the Battle of Crecy, David II attacked the north of England but was routed at what has become known as the Battle of Neville’s Cross.  

Battle of Neville's Cross

The story goes that David, heavily wounded, fled the battlefield and took refuge under the arch of Aldin Grange Bridge on the river Browney. There he was said to have been betrayed by his own reflection in the river and was thus captured by John Coupland. Legend or truth, what is clear is that when Coupland delivered David to the English king, Edward, he was rewarded with  a substantial fee and a knighthood. David was imprisoned in the Tower of London for ten years and finally handed back to the Scots apparently for a ransom that would equate to c £15 million in today’s money.  Whether the ransom was actually paid is however a debatable point.  

Saddest of all the efforts of the Scots was the enormous loss of Scottish lives at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, when James IV attacked England in support of France despite the English King, Henry, being James’ brother-in-law. It was said that ‘the flower of Scottish nobility perished on that day’ and the lament ‘Flowers of the Forest’ commemorates the deaths of James and around 10,000 of his men. There were few of the leading families in Scotland untouched by that tragedy. The site of the battle and the fallen on both sides is commemorated in a memorial cross. It is near where I currently live and walking around the battlefield is incredibly atmospheric. 

                                                                 Site of the Battle of Flooden

 So what did the Scots get in return for centuries of service to France? Quite a bit actually. Many individuals received military, civil and ecclesiastical honours and offices, but most importantly, every Scot was entitled to letters of naturalization – in effect giving them the right to dual nationality. (Handy if you’re in trouble in your home country!)  That right was confirmed by Henry IV as late as 1599, with letters signed by him at the palace of Fontainbleau, and I love the detail - ‘sealed with the great seal in green wax, in a lace of red and green silk.’  This ensured that Scots could be testate in France and could both inherit and dispose of any assets they possessed there.  This is of relevance to my fictional family, the Munros, who are central figures in my Scottish trilogy, set in the real-life feud between the Cunninghame and Montgomerie families, called the 'Ayrshire Vendetta'.  

 

Another important result of the alliance was the establishment of the Gardes Ecossaise in 1418 – an elite troop that was supposed to be comprised entirely of Scots (that was the theory, however there is evidence that others were admitted and both Mary Queen of Scots and James VI are recorded as having made protests on that score.) The Gardes formed the royal bodyguard of successive French kings and their duties ranged from keeping the keys of the King’s bedchamber and assisting at the reception of ambassadors and waiting at coronations, baptisms and marriages of royal children, to carrying the body and guarding the effigy of a (dead) King. One captain of the Gardes was Robert Stewart of Aubigny and both he and the Auld Alliance are commemorated at a ceremony in Aubigny-sur-Neve to this day. 

My own interest in the Auld Alliance stems from researching the Gardes Ecossaise, because the real-life Patrick Montgomerie, one of my favourite historical characters in my trilogy, was a captain in this elite troop. His involvement in the Gardes allowed me to take my fictional family to France.

A  rather elegantly dressed Garde Ecossaise

But perhaps the most important advantage that the Auld Alliance gave to Scots were trading privileges for Scots merchants. They were required to pay only ¼ of the normal duty on all the goods that they imported from France to Scotland and were similarly acquitted from new duties imposed on merchandise they brought to France.  Interestingly these privileges didn’t stop even after the Act of Union in 1707 which formally linked England and Scotland under a single parliamentary system. English merchants continued to be penalized, while Scots merchants were not.

 

Historian Dr Siobhan Talbott has spent some years researching the treaty signed in 1295 and suggests that there is no evidence that it was ever formally rescinded. Others have suggested that it was dissolved by the Treaty of Edinburgh in 1560, as a by-product of the reformation in Scotland, but she is convinced that there isn’t anything in the treaty to support that view. Three facts also support her view – that Henry IV again ratified the naturalization of all Scots in 1599, that trading privileges continued even after 1707, and that in 1942 Charles de Gaulle made a speech describing the Auld Alliance as an active agreement; claiming it was the ‘oldest in the world’. If this is indeed true it is now 730 years old, and as such trounces the other contender for ‘oldest treaty’ – that between England and Portugal signed in 1373.  

 

Postscript: In 1906, under the Entente Cordiale, the part of the agreement that meant that Scots had the same rights in France as the native French was rescinded, but not made retrospective. Which means theoretically anyone born before 1906 could still claim dual nationality, even today.  Though, as I’m not aware of any Scots older than 120, it probably doesn’t matter too much now! 

 

Margaret Skea is the author of the prize-winning Munro Scottish Saga, as well as a fictionalised biography of Katharina von Bora, the wife of the reformer, Martin Luther, a contemporary missionary biography, and a collection of short stories.   These are available in selected UK bookshops or direct from Margaret's website at https://www.margaretskea.com and in print and kindle via Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Margaret-Skea/author/B009B9HCUC?ref

  

 

 

 

 

 

French view of the First World War by Janie Hampton

During the last four years we have seen the First World War from many angles. But how did the French see it? A few years ago I found two large-format bound volumes of the magazine L’Illustration in the street with a notice ‘Take Me’. Being an obedient citizen, I did. And then wondered what to do with them. Now I am glad I did not throw them out.  My school French can read the titles and the subject matter but not the detail. So I share with you some of the 100s of illustrations, drawn and photographed.

A fictional village in Alsace the day after German occupation
- suddenly the residents are very patriotic

French soldiers crossing the Canal d'Yser under fire....

..while officers of several armies enjoy life in the Café du Paix in Paris...

...and their daughters play in the Bois de Boulogne...

...and refugee children from the North hope for morsels of food.

Aeroplanes were a new weapon of war..

...but the French Army relied on donkeys for transport in the trenches.

...and reinforcements from the 43rd Battalion of Senegal.

L’Illustration dealt with subjects other than war, including the dangers of high heels (with X-Rays of damaged ankles to prove it); how to bottle apples; and the Russian Revolution (the editor of L’Illustration did not seem to like the Bolsheviks). In December 1918, advertisements reappeared on the back page. 

At the end of the war, there were celebrations across France. 

..while German prisoners-of -war wondered 'What next?'
Nearly 130,000 prisoners were taken at La Somme in August 1918.

France, depicted as a lovely woman, thanks a French soldier for saving her....

..while a surprised 'America' glares at a conquered 'Germany'.

After the war, soldiers rescued a bronze sculpture of  Eve, made by Auguste Rodin
in 1881 and buried in a garden in Douai, northern France

The British Prime Minister Lloyd George was awarded a double-page  portrait on the last page of L'Illustration 1918.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

Waking up in a French cave, by Gillian Polack

This morning I’m dreaming of France. 

I suspect this is a problem that writers who use history in their fiction tend to have. Not specifically to dream about France, but to wake up mentally in the place and time of a novel. This morning I was certain that I would step out of bed into a cave system and that, just outside the main entrance, I’d find the Languedoc I used for Langue[dot]doc 1305.

I can tell you exactly how this strange moment came about, and the story of how it came about is actually more interesting than the moment itself.

My favourite research time was when I walked in the countryside, on the pilgrim’s route. I saw the flowers and felt the air. That gave me a mental toolkit for walking from the channelled air and warm streets of St-Guilhem-le-Désert to a flowing path of the pilgrimage to what I already knew about the stillness and chill of limestone caves. To be honest, caves are seldom entirely still if they are alive, but compared with the different feel of the air in different parts of the hillside outside the caves, they felt so still that they became contemplative.

Leaving town to go on pilgrimage. Photogr

aph: Gillian Polack

The caves became my hallmark moment for the novel, the one I used as a bridge to get into it. This isn’t because that’s how the time travellers got there. It’s because I’ve loved cave systems since I was a child. The feel of my caves was from Australia, married with research into how the caves in that part of France were different to those I knew.

I still have a scribbled diagram somewhere of how I drew the caves and built them. My town is real and my countryside is something I could walk on today if I didn’t live so very far away. This whole blogpost is being written by someone in Canberra who woke up in Languedoc then got out of bed and thought, “Bother. Still Canberra.”

There be caves in these rocks! Photograph: Gillian Polack

But my caves are a place that cross time and space and I can wake up in them from time to time. Today a group of triggers tricked me into waking up to a cool and still world. Another blanket and I’d’ve stayed in bed an hour longer and dreamed dreams of France. 

The first of the events that triggered this morning’s moment of strangeness was my return to France this July. I was in the north. A different type of warmth. Amiens is clammier in summer, with marshes rather than hot hillside. Cooler, but it felt warmer. I found respite in a boat rather than in stone houses and in dreams of caves. Still, each time I’m in France, I remember other times and Languedoc was lurking.

The pilgrim route. Photograph: Gillian Polack

Then someone read my novel and didn’t like it. We all have our audiences and this reader wasn’t one of mine. He gave a neutral review, which was very fair, and I nodded to myself and hoped that he’d find a book to his taste in the next one he picked up.  The reviewer not enjoying it was not a problem.

One thing he said, though, niggled me.

When I built up that very careful Middle Ages, I put in a lot of history that people were living. It wasn’t explained. 

The way my Medieval people behave is based on research concerning lives, economy, religion and a range of other things. I already had The Middle Ages Unlocked to play with and all the notes on the French Middle Ages that went with earlier research (for I am a Medieval historian, when all’s said and done), and I also had all the material that didn’t go into that volume. This was my starting point for Langue[dot]doc 1305. I then spent several weeks building up the commerce of the region and understanding it and working out where each character fitted and how it affected their lives. I knew the flow of trade and what made that trade. I knew the seasons and the hierarchies and the odd little opportunities that came up.

There were no explanations of these commerce systems because my characters were living them. Bona’s apprenticeship was derived from some comments made in a teaching document from Montpellier. The document challenged existing assumptions about the opportunities for girls in medieval Montpellier. I measured its challenge against what we knew about local trades and crafts. from a commercial history of Montpellier and its region to see how to give her that path out of small town living that would have been so very desirable.

Modern Montpellier. Photograph: Gillian Polack

I researched how the sale of cloth took the sales part of a weaving team to fairs outside the town and why a particular type of horse should neither be kept in a small hilly town without the social infrastructure that would enable it to be used and why it was unlikely to simply be sold locally. I showed where people bought different items and how a noble would move from being in the world of his peers to being in the Mediterranean trade world and what it would cost him. I only showed these things as the story and its characters required it. 

I didn’t explain any of this. Anyone wanting a primer on Medieval commerce or politics or… most things… needs to go to non-fiction. My characters were living the world and didn’t tell each other the obvious. If I were to tell you I was typing this article on my trusty computer, it would be very tactful of you to stifle a laugh because, right now, it’s only if I get the article together in another way (by dictating as I swim in the local streams, especially given I cannot swim) that really is worth of comment. 

It’s a difficult decision that each writer makes. Worlds don’t come magically to life. We work at them and think them through and decide which bit works for us and how it will work and, today, why one particular approach worked for me for one particular novel and why this one approach is not a universal one and doesn’t work for all readers. 

The bottom line is which parts of daily life need explaining and which don’t. Some writers would give a description of that commerce and their book would be perfect for that reader. I did not and my book was not. Thinking about it and working out why I did not and just how important it was to me to have my townsfolk live and my scientists talk about things led me into the cultural differences between my time travellers and the Languedocian townsfolk. 

That was why I made the choices I made. I wanted readers to see my Middle Ages from the inside, since I already had The Middle Ages Unlocked to show them from the outside. And that was the thought I went to bed on last night.

I may be a Medieval historian, but bringing the Medieval world to life in my novel meant I had to make it so believable that I myself can step into it and it’s there when I wake up in the morning. This morning I did just that.

Fighting bad months with metaphor - by Gillian Polack

Some months are created to try us and my August was one of those months. Early on, I knew precisely what I was going to write for History Girls for September. I don’t remember what the topic was any more, but I remember being struck by its lucidity and clarity and logic. Then August struck.

One of the happenings that caused me to forget my absolutely superb plan for this post was a simple burglary. Over 1200 of my books were stolen. Much fiction, some reference, over a hundred cookbooks and several boxes of scholarly history are on the market somewhere, crying to the world to give them an equally loved home. This created such a neat metaphor for how we see the past and why historical fiction is such a wonderful thing. 

It wasn’t the theft alone that created the metaphor. Let me be honest, the theft alone caused me the gnash my teeth and tear out my hair and to forget to eat on one day and to overeat the next. I settled myself down by (in between dealing with all the other events life through at me in August) looking at pictures.

Those pictures explain everything. Maybe. Let me talk about them. 

Think of a marsh. No people. Constant currents pulling at the verges and constant changes to everything. A marsh is stable largely because of its instability. What we see of it is that microsecond only, and the next microsecond we might see something else and the next day, that glimpse we had of overgrown weed might have been dragged somewhere else and the bank it was next to may have crumbled entirely. Or not. Here, have a picture of a microsecond:

If we add people to the marsh, things change. A boat goes down the same path, time after time and so that path is more likely to remain and more likely to actually be upkept. 

Someone sees a crumbling edge and forcibly restrains it. It lasts longer. You can look at it from a boat and say, “I know what this is.”  That bit of the marsh has a story.

The next time you look off to the side on your boat trip, you add the presence of humans to what you see and you read that landscape differently.

Some people do more than reinforce banks or prevent crumble. Some people take that ground they’ve kept stable and build on it. That bit of the marsh has a story we can all understand.

If the marsh is the past, then historians and archaeologists and scientists are the one who make it possible for us to see it for more than the microsecond we move through it. They reinforce banks and make paths for boats and even build the boats. 

Without historical fiction, though, a large percentage of those looking at the past will find tables of data or scholarly interpretation of important documents...but won't see much from them. For some of us, these things are boats through water and commentaries and we can see and understand. Others, however, understand and enjoy more when they’re shown a boat, ushered onto it, and told stories about the surroundings. 

Even on the boat, there are different types of stories for different types of readers. Some like historical fiction that’s as close as it can be to the discoveries and interpretations made by historians. Others want invented names and life dreams given to the houses they can see from the boat.

 

The bottom line is that historians and historical fiction writers might act as if we are at odds, but in cultural terms, we work together. Our memories of the past aren’t wild marsh; they’re formed and contain stories. 

Let me admit, it’s a bad metaphor. But it was a bad month. The pictures I took at the Hortillonages (marsh once, but an important part of the history of Amiens for so very long) will hopefully make up for it.