[57] Albert of Aix, in H. C. Oc., iv, p. 504; Ordericus, iv, pp. 72-75; Fulcher, pp. 320-321, 342-343; Translatio S. Nicolai Venetiam, in H. C. Oc., v, p. 271.
APPENDIX F
THE BATTLE OF TINCHEBRAY[1]
The tactics of the battle of Tinchebray have been the subject of much discussion among recent writers, including the specialists in military history. There is general agreement as to the strategical stroke by which the victory was won, viz., a surprise attack upon the flank of the ducal forces by a band of mounted knights from Maine and Brittany. But as to the disposition of the troops in the two main armies, widely different views are held upon two points.
(1) Oman thinks that the battle formation on each side was an extended line made up of a right, centre, and left.[2] Ramsay, on the other hand, holds that the opposing forces were “marshalled in column, in successive divisions”;[3] and this view is accepted by Drummond,[4] by Delbrück,[5] and by Davis,[6] the two latter conjecturing a formation in échelon. Ramsay’s view is pretty clearly supported by the sources. Ordericus Vitalis (iv, p. 229) designates a first, second, and third acies, or division, on the side of the king, and a first and last (extrema) acies on the side of the duke; and, according to his account, only the first acies, i.e., the leading elements, of the two opposing forces engaged in the fighting. The contemporary letter of a priest of Fécamp, which is discussed below, is also specific with regard to the royal forces, describing a first and a second acies.[7]
(2) The larger question in debate between the specialists, however, turns upon the relative importance of cavalry and infantry in the battle of Tinchebray. Oman, relying upon a very specific passage in Henry of Huntingdon (p. 235), and placing a strained interpretation upon Ordericus Vitalis (iv, p. 229), holds that the battle was almost wholly an affair of infantry, and therefore almost without precedent in the tactics of the period.[8] For Ramsay, on the other hand, it was mainly an engagement of cavalry, the foot soldiers playing but a minor part.[9] Drummond has gone even further and taken great pains to demonstrate that it was a “ganze normale Schlacht des XII. Jahrhunderts,” i.e., a battle between mounted knights, the foot soldiery that happened to be present being held entirely in reserve;[10] and Drummond’s conclusions have been accepted without question by Delbrück.[11]
It is surprising that in none of the discussion above noted has any account been taken of the most important extant source for the tactics of Tinchebray, viz., a letter from a priest of Fécamp to a priest of Séez written a very few days after the engagement, and describing with exactness certain tactical features of the battle. If not actually by an eyewitness, the letter is still by one who was in touch with the king and who was well informed as to the disposition of the royal forces. It is, therefore, entitled to rank as an authority above any of the accounts in the chronicles. It was first discovered by Paul Meyer in an Oxford manuscript,[12] and published in 1872 by Léopold Delisle as a note in his great edition of the chronicle of Robert of Torigny (i, p. 129). But, strangely overlooked by all the military historians, it remained unused, and was rediscovered by H. W. C. Davis and published with extensive comment in 1909 in the English Historical Review (xxiv, pp. 728-732) as a “new source.” As afterwards turned out, Davis’s transcription of the letter had been exceedingly faulty—rendering, indeed, a part of the text which was fundamental for tactics quite unintelligible—and in a later number of the Review (xxv, p. 296) it was again published in a corrected text. By a comparison with the original edition of Delisle[13] it appears that, by an almost unbelievable coincidence, the same omission of an entire line of the manuscript was made there as in the edition of Davis. Yet all transcripts have been made from a single manuscript, viz., Jesus College, Oxford, no. 51, fol. 104. We have, then, at last, a correct edition of this important source in the English Historical Review, xxv, p. 296.[14]
Davis, in commenting on the tactics of the battle in the light of this letter, but from his own faulty transcript, maintains that neither of the extreme views is correct, and suggests “a third interpretation of the evidence, midway between the two existing theories.”[15] He holds that infantry played an important part in the action, but still assigns much prominence to the cavalry. Apropos of the corrected text of the priest’s letter, however, he remarks: “Taking the omitted words into consideration, it is clear that the foot soldiers played a larger part in the battle than I allowed in my article. The second of Henry’s divisions, like the first, was composite, containing both infantry and cavalry.”[16] This, indeed, is the correct view. Our conception of the battle of Tinchebray must be based upon the sources, and not upon a preconceived theory of the all-importance of the mounted knight in twelfth-century warfare. Drummond and Delbrück have quite unjustifiably ignored Henry of Huntingdon in favor of Ordericus Vitalis. Whatever the theorists may hold, foot soldiers did play an unusually large part in the battle of Tinchebray. In view of the explicit statement of Henry of Huntingdon (p. 235) and of the priest of Fécamp[17] it cannot be denied that, on the king’s side at least, some knights were dismounted and fought on foot, in order that they might stand more firmly (ut constantius pugnarent). On the other hand, Oman, while perfectly justified in pointing out the unusual prominence given to foot soldiers, certainly exaggerates in representing the battle as almost wholly an affair of infantry. The large part played by cavalry is clear both from the explicit statement of the priest of Fécamp and from the account of Ordericus Vitalis. The battle of Tinchebray may, therefore, still claim to stand as an important precedent in the development of mediaeval tactics because of the unusual combination of infantry and cavalry in the fighting line.