The Sport of War

Even though the semester has ended, I’m still pondering Laws of War—and not just in the Middle Ages.  There’s a Matrix-like quality to this—once you become aware of these patterns, you see them everywhere!  Not surprising, since man has been at war pretty much constantly throughout the course of recorded history. Heck, the very first work of literature is about a war!  

Then Ares roared like a trumpet, as loud as nine thousand men could shout, aye, ten thousand men in the turmoil of battle! Trojans and Achaians alike trembled to hear the roar of the insatiate God of War!

 And of course the Bible is chock-FULL of warfare—David and Goliath, Judah Maccabee the Rock Star...

…even the endgame, Armageddon, is a battle scenario. (Interestingly Armageddon is a placename—Megiddo is the name of an ancient city.)  We tend to see war as this random, chaotic force of obliteration but there are recognizable, distinct patterns which emerge again and again, and not just in history.  

These patterns are perhaps most apparent in our sports culture—most forms of organized sports tend to be team vs. team, facing each other on opposing fields, much like the classic pitched battle.  You can see this in basketball, soccer, even tennis, but the classic sports metaphor for war is football, which shares the:

• terminology (blitzes, bombs)
• strategy           (front lines, flanking maneuvers)
• tactics (artillery vs. infantry) 

as well as protective armor.  What is a running game but an updated version of medieval jousting, with the players functioning as both destrier and knight?  Football fans are even referred to as weekend warriors!  And their latter-day woadwood would do any Celtic warrior proud.  

William Wallace, Woad Warrior…

I’ve found that reading Froissart’s Chronicles has brought a whole new appreciation to the playoffs.

And—cheerleaders, that peculiarly American contribution to team sports.  We love them, we fear them, we live vicariously through grrrlpower Kristen Dunst movies. (Full disclosure—I was never a cheerleader (3-sport varsity athlete here!) but I always thought it would be fun.) But, you ask,  how do cheerleaders fit into the football-as-war scenario?  Well, although women couldn’t actually fight in medieval battles* they did have a military function in chivalry—as an audience for the knight, to spur him to greater deeds, literally to see him off as he marched off to war.  Interestingly the first cheerleaders were actually men, so this possible parallel with medieval women has actually developed over time.  Of course nowadays cheerleaders are not content to merely watch and applaud--they take the field in their own right.

They even have a castle!

*Joan of Arc was clearly the ass-kicking and name-taking exception.

Macbeth and Battle Tactics in the Hebrew Bible

I'm pursuing two main projects for the next couple of months:

•       studying Laws of War in the Middle Ages at Columbia, and
•       dramaturging Macbeth for the White Rabbit Theatre Company here in Manhattan.

Both of these ventures are taking up an enormous amount of time, not helped in the slightest by my need to over-prepare, over-write, over-ruminate.  But then anything worth doing is worth doing thoroughly, and it's fascinating how these two projects are informing each other.  Of course the real Macbeth, the actual Scottish King who reigned during the 11th century, has popped up already in one of my texts for class.  I say this carefully, since Macbeth is a personal favorite of mine--but the poor guy got a bit of a hatchet job.  The real king reigned for quite some time, 17 years, and his predecessor Duncan was a young man killed in battle, not murdered in his bed.  But Shakespeare was not an historian; he was a dramatist and a courtier, and used this rather obscure king to explore the concept of violence as a political tool, the idea of human nature and the impact of personal choice and to ingratiate himself further with the Scottish king of England, James I.

*I like to wonder what her first name is--something beautifully Scottish perhaps, like Elspeth or Margaret or Catriona.  And I always wondered--is Scottish noble/royal nomenclature different from that of the English?  In Richard III, Richard is referred to as Gloucester, his title, until he assumes the throne.  Why is Macbeth not noted in the script as Glamis first?

At any rate, another Macbeth catch was a bit more obscure.  Last Wednesday the subject of the lecture was classical sources (such as Biblical) that may have influenced medieval military theorists.  Specifically we were looking at codes of war in the Hebrew Bible, and examined a passage in Deuteronomy--the injunction against laying waste to trees during a siege.  We examined several different possible interpretations of this passage (the first was from the King James Version):

• Thou shalt not cut them down for the tree of the field is man's life/food to employ them in the siege.

• For is the tree of the field a man, that they should be besieged by you?

• Is the tree in the field a man, to enter before thee into the work of the siege?

Then this one jumped out at me:

• ...instead you shall make use of the trees to go before you in the siege.

In Macbeth Malcolm is the one who has the idea of cutting down the trees of Birnam Wood and carrying them in front to hide their forces.  Of course it's a fairly common tactic in guerrilla warfare as well, and although I love the idea of Malcolm getting the idea from Deuteronomy it's perhaps a stretch to think that he was poring over the KJV (how meta would that be in 1611!) or the Douay-Rheims for inspiration while in exile in England.  Still it's a neat little reminder of why I find military strategy so interesting--it never changes.  What worked for the Hebrews, worked for Malcolm's rebel army.  Just like what worked for the Roman army when confronted with Pyrrhus's elephants, worked for the fighters of the Rebel Alliance when confronted with the A.T.A.T.'s in the Battle of Hoth.