Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir

"Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir, thy thirst will pass."

This is a quote from the Combat of the Thirty, a famous chivalric bloodbath that took place on this day in 1351. When one of the combatants, Jean de Beaumanoir, called for water to ease his perishing thirst, he was told by one of his men to sup on his own blood. There was plenty of the stuff, after all, flowing from his many wounds.

The reasons for the Combat are somewhat obscure. It was a staged battle between thirty picked knights on either side, fought in Brittany during the War of the Breton Succession. The challenge was formally issued by Beaumonoir, a captain of Charles of Blois supported by Philip VI of France, to Robert Bembrough, a captain of Jean de Montfort supported by Edward III of England.

Everything was properly arranged. There were stands for spectators, food and drinks laid on, along with (presumably) rolls of bandages and a handy priest to shrive the dead. Such formally organised combats were not uncommon, but for some reason this one caught the imagination of poets and chroniclers. The main source is Jean de Froissart, that lover of chivalric deeds of arms; the more brutal and bloody and essentially pointless, the better.

Froissart described the combat as an English vs French affair; in reality, the lists of names of the combatants reveal a mixture of Franco-Bretons and Anglo-Bretons, with a German or two. The fight itself was a brutal hacking and slashing melee, with two teams of men in full armour having at it with war hammers, swords, pole axes, daggers, maces and all the other butcher's tools that always make me shiver to look at. Froissart makes it sound rather like a medieval rugby match:

"Then one of them gave the signal and immediately they ran over and fought fiercely all in a pile."

Sophisticated stuff. At first Team England had the better of it, and managed to knock over four French for two English. After a short break for wine and plasters, and some encouraging words from their coaches, the slaughter resumed. A member of Team France then committed a foul, which somehow escaped the referre: he snuck round the back, got on a horse and galloped straight through Team England. In the ensuing chaos, Bembrough and eight of his men were butchered. No VAR in those days.

So the day ended with victory for Team France. One shouldn't sneer too much at these men - they were brave, if nothing else, and certainly had more guts than me (until they got ripped out). For better or worse, this is the sort of thing warriors have always done, from the days of Homer up until the present. And it was a great day out for the spectators.