What Color Is The Devil And Why Is It Black?

I was on Twitter the other day and shared a meme of mine in which Plato talks with the devil. The person whom I sent the meme then asked me what I first constructed as a troll comment: “Why is the devil black?” We find many things on Twitter and I first thought that my interlocutor was leaning toward a slightly veiled racist comment. He kept asking, however, why was the devil pictured as black? That’s when I remembered that the devil is mostly depicted in red today and it hit me that it could be a legitimate question to understand why the devil was pictured as black in medieval manuscripts.

Keep in mind that I’m an ass. As advertized!

The Devil’s Color Today Is Red

I mean, I should have connected the dots faster! I’m Belgian and our national football/soccer team is called the ‘Red Devils’. They’re quite famous nowadays: Eden Hazard (Real Madrid C.F.), Romelu Lukaku (F.C. Internationale Milano), Dries Mertens (S.S.C. Napoli), Axel Witsen (Borussia Dortmund), Vincent Company (formerly at R.S.C. Anderlecht) and Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City F.C.). All of them are international superstars! When I went to Naples recently, I discovered that talking about the Red Devils was actually a great way to connect with locals (thank you Dries Mertens!).

When I went to Naples recently, I discovered that talking about the Red Devils was actually a great way to connect with locals (thank you Dries Mertens!).

Also, if you look for devils on Google image search, you’ll only see the color red in the matching results. Red is the color of Hell because it is the color of fire and Hell is constructed in our heads as a place full of fire since it is located at the core of the Earth, deep under the surface (whereas angels have white wings since they live above the clouds).

A quick Google search of the Devil will paint your web navigator in red.

However, red was not always the Devil’s color. I remember watching an old documentary—that I’m too lazy to track down—which told how he was depicted in green a long time ago. Nevertheless the color red caught on a bad reputation in the 16^th century among Protestants because it was the color of the people who supported the pope*. Protestants also focused on a passage of the Apocalypse read that red was the color of the beast that rides the whore of Babylon. The color that she also wore herself:

I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color.

~ Book of Revelation, 17:3-4.

Nevertheless the color red caught on a bad reputation in the 16^th century among Protestants because it was the color of the people who supported the pope.

As the historian Michel Pastoureau reminds us, Martin Luther saw Rome as the new Babylon. Red was therefore the color to avoid at all cost. It comes as no surprise then that the color red gradually became more and more associated with the devil and evil. Even in the Catholic world, only women would later be allowed to wear red, that’s probably why pink is today seen as a color for little girls whereas blue is the color of little boys. But more on that later.

Back to red devils, they are so popular now that they dictate the features of fictional characters when they’re supposed to be threatening, dangerous and evil. I’ll take only one example in that regard and that is the case of Darth Maul in Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace. A most scarlet face hides under his black hood. He even has horns on his head instead of hair to fully assimilate him with a demon from the underworld. As soon as the audience sees his face, they know he’s an evil character and can’t be anything else but evil. It is an easy, clever and straightforward representation. If we were to extrapolate about the color red in the Star Wars universe, unless when Queen Amidala wears it (and maybe in a few other occurrences), it is quite clearly linked with evil whereas the color blue, a celestial color, represents the good. As Anakin Skywalker slowly transforms into Darth Vador, though he still wields a blue lightsaber, his eyes turn red. That aesthetic is carried on in the latest episodes of Star Wars and is fairly obvious to spot when Kylo Ren and Rey are facing each other in Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.

If we were to extrapolate about the color red in the Star Wars universe, unless when Queen Amidala wears it (and maybe in a few other occurrences), it is quite clearly linked with evil whereas the color blue, a celestial color, represents the good.

* Michel Pastoureau & Dominique Simonnet, Le petit livre des couleurs. Paris: Points, 2004.

What the Color Red Meant in the Middle Ages

Before the 16^th century and prior to the Reformation, however, the color red was the noblest of all, second only to gold—and white, maybe. Red is the color of blood and the only blood that mattered was the blood of Christ, who died to save us all, according to Christian theology. It reminded its martyr. It was holy and sacred.

Seraphs, which are described as the angels who were the closest to God, were depicted with red wings in medieval manuscripts when they were not exclusively red! Various illuminations depicting the hierarchy of angels in Heaven systematically color the seraphs in red, at the very top of the celestial ladder, right next to God. I’m not making this up, look at the illuminations for yourself.

Similarly the highest ranked clerics of the Church wore red gowns. They still do. I’m talking about the cardinals of the Catholic Church, of course, that even have a shade of red, a red bird (the northern cardinal) and fishes displaying red scales (the cardinal tetra) named after them. According to Catholic theology, the Church on earth is supposed to reflect the heavenly Church of God and his angels. The pope equates God in this parallel and the cardinals equate the seraphs. Anyone who’d consider the Church not worthy of this holy comparison—because the earthly Church, reportedly founded by Christ himself, is supposed to be holy by definition—put himself in great danger. Such was the case of John Wycliffe, an English theologian who was personally protected by the King and therefore avoided ecclesiastical prosecution. Wycliffe wrote that the Church on earth couldn’t compare in terms of holiness with the heavenly Church of God. It gave birth to the long-lasting heresy of the Lollards, which would be persecuted and repressed violently.

As Michel Pastoureau reminds us, in his short and delightful book I’ve already referenced above, red was also the color worn by women on their wedding day, especially by brides from the lower social class.

The point I’m trying to make is that red was seen as a holy and prestigious color in the Middle Ages. As Michel Pastoureau reminds us, in his short and delightful book I’ve already referenced above, red was also the color worn by women on their wedding day, especially by brides from the lower social class.

I’ve done a quick research on that in digitized manuscripts and sure thing, we don’t see a single bride in white! White—as it is commonly known—became the traditional color of wedding gowns during the 19^th century. Women were invited to wear their most expensive and lavish dress on their wedding day during the Middle Ages and red pigments were particularly expensive, beyond the fact that the color red carried a highly spiritual meaning. As for jewels, women often borrowed from their relatives on their big day but mostly they wore crowns. I’ve seen a few examples of golden and blue dresses—in one case I spotted a green dress. However, if the bride is not wearing any red herself, the groom or the witnesses would wear it instead. Red was the color of weddings!

Red was the color of weddings!

Which brings us, naturally, to the infamous “Red Wedding” written by G.R.R. Martin in his novel series A Song of Fire and Ice—adapted for television in Game of Thrones. I will only mention it to stress how that wedding didn’t fit any properly medieval setting. Rarely do we read about weddings ending ugly in medieval chronicles. A wedding was a sacred ceremony, not only a feast but a holy moment well defined and framed by the Church. Any crime committed during a wedding would have resulted in the most pernicious and vicious excommunication. Carrying on sieges and battles on holy days were already the mainsprings of bad reputation to knights and military commanders. Joan of Arc suffered such a fate when she led the siege of Paris on a day devoted to the Virgin Mary. Straight out murders and massacres on wedding days would have caused the utter destruction of anyone’s reputation and it would have cost him all his allies. This was not a smart move. It is funny how sometimes G.R.R. Martin properly draws from medieval history, like when he writes about the death of Robert Baratheon during a wild boar hunting party, yet more often than not he stretches away from historical veracity to come up with his own symbolism. The Red Wedding is red because of all the blood that was shed. Weddings were red in the Middle Ages because most people dressed in red on such occasions and the color red carried a noble spiritual meaning.

The Red Wedding (in A Song of Fire and Ice) is red because of all the blood that was shed. Weddings were red in the Middle Ages because most people dressed in red on such occasions and the color red carried a noble spiritual meaning.

Red Beasts and Black Beasts

Red was the color of the divine, a color that carried prestige and meant power. If the Good, the Bad and the Ugly were medieval colors, the Good would be red, the Bad would be black, and the Ugly would be another tale entirely—though he could also be black. Such a definition helps us understand how animals were categorized in the Books of King Modus and Queen Ratio. The author, presumably Henry of Ferrières, divides commonly hunted forest animals into two sorts: the red beasts (the noble ones) and the black beasts (the nasty ones).

The five red beasts are the following: the deer, the doe, the fallow deer, the roe and the hare. The five black beasts are as follows: the boar, the sow, the wolf, the fox and the otter. One could argue that the fox is a red beast but the terminology here carries meaning beyond the sole color of the animal’s fur. The Books of King Modus and Queen Ratio is not only a hunting treatise, it is also an allegorical tale. Every time King Modus explains how animals are to be hunted, Queen Ratio delivers the symbolic and spiritual meaning of those animals according to the Christian faith and the Catholic dogma. That’s why she argues that if the deer has ten pikes on his antlers to defend himself from harm, the Christian has the Ten Commandments at his disposal to shield himself against all evil. The deer not only belongs to the “good beasts”, it is a Christological beast, whereas the boar is an evil animal that guards the satanic tree of the Devil’s Ten Commandments. It all belongs to the rhetoric that our world is merely the projected shadow of a higher one: God’s own realm.

What’s funny though is that in most manuscripts containing the Books of King Modus and Queen Ratio I found out that the boar was represented upon a red background (see above). So there may be more to red that I let on is this blog post. Indeed, as you can also see in the few illuminations depicting St John that I’ve encountered, the devil taunting him as he writes the Book of Revelation is not systematically black, he can also be red! Oh, the flimsiness of cultural and representation studies. What’s funny with the Late Middle Age allegoric literature is that anything could be seen as godly or devilish depending on the author’s intent as long as it respected or reminded the Catholic dogma in any way, shape or form. Even the fornication tales of Jupiter could carry a divine meaning to the more daring of medieval scholars. They wrote several books around that theme—but as Maz Kanata puts it in The Force Awakens: “That’s a story of another time.”

Going Full Circle: Black Beasts as the Beast

Boars, sows, wolves, foxes and otters were all considered as pests to get rid of. They were deemed dangerous. It was indeed a risky venture to hunt the wild boar in the forest, as many romances told and several dead kings proved to be true. Age of Empires 2 players must also be very careful when hunting the wild boars in the Dark Age.

Such beasts, the black beasts, were thought to stink, to bite, to destroy everything in their path. It comes as no surprise then that the Beast, the incarnation of evil, would adopt their features and characteristic. The Beast had to be black. And since it was formerly an angel, it had wings! But not any wings: bat wings.

A cistercian lay brother cutting down a devilish creature – Paris, BnF, fr. 2608, f. 381r

Bats didn’t have the best reputation during the Middle Ages depending on where they lived. In Northern Spain? They were loved—but more on that in a minute. In Northern France? Not so much. To begin with, bats hairless, which is the reason why they’re called “bald mouse” in French (“chauve-souris”), and it gave way to several interpretations. Not all of them favorable to their kin. Bats are naked as the alcoholics and the gluttons are naked from selling even their clothes in order to give way to their addiction. That’s how the Ovide moralisé puts it*.

Moreover, the Latin word for bat is “vespertilio” (in Old French it was still “vespertille”). It meant “the bird that flies at night” or the bird of darkness. Bats are pleased to live in the dark and they wouldn’t have it any other way. They flee the light. Such are the sinners, who run away from knowledge and the holy beacon of faith and truth that was the Church (supposedly).

The Beast, who’s dark and black and master of evil, only has bat wings as a natural conclusion of the medieval symbolism I presented here to you. It answers the question why the devil was black in medieval manuscripts instead of red but it does not end this blog post. Here comes the bonus section for those who stuck until the end!

The Devil may have turned red, sure, yet he still appears in black today but in disguise, with another name and under another mantle. At night, he roams the streets of a major city that is infested by criminals. He tracks them down and give them Hell. You know that new devil yourself. His name is known to you. Batman, he is called. How did he acquire such a name? The legend says that Bruce Wayne was pondering at night how to inflict fear to criminals. In his office, he gathered his thoughts.

“Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black terrible… a… a…”

As if in answer, a huge bat flied in the open window.

“A bat! That’s it! It’s an omen..; I shall become a bat!”

And thus is born in this weird figure of the dark… this avenger of evil: the Batman.

~ DC #33, Nov. 1939

However, Bruce Wayne was certainly not the first person to have a bat fly in and become an omen. Oh, no! Such a fate happened to King James I of Aragon in the 13^th century. Remember when I told you that bats had a good reputation in Northern Spain? Here is why**.

King James was in his tent, just as Bruce Wayne was in his office. King James pondered about the upcoming battle, just as Bruce Wayne pondered about his upcoming crusade against criminals. The word crusade is almost too fitting here since King James was readying himself against Moorish enemies. As he spotted the bat, he figured it was a good omen—just as Bruce Wayne did—and he put the symbol of a bat on the top of his banners the next day. The battle was won and since then bats have been figures of good luck in the region of Valencia and Barcelona, even to this day!

I started mentioning a football/soccer team. It is only fitting that I’d end up with another: the Valencia C.F. which celebrated its hundred-year anniversary this very year! If you look at their jersey, you’d see a bat on the top of their flag. As a matter of fact, it clearly reminds Iberian medieval coat of arms, where bats were not uncommon but very much present (I’ll let you look it up for yourselves).

Oh, the flimsiness of cultural and representation studies!

On a final word, I leave you to reconsider the hypothesis advanced by Gabriel Iglesias aka Fluffy. Could Batman be Mexican? King James spoke a kind of Spanish. Therefore Batman might very well be hispanic! Enjoy the video.

* More on that: Angela Calenda, “La métamorphose des Minéides en chauves-souris dans l’Ovide moralisé”, in Reinardus. Yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 28 (2016), p. 23-30.

** More on that: Denise Tupinier, “Origine et signification de la Chauve-Souris dans les provinces du Levant espagnol”, in Publications de la Société Linnéenne de Lyon, 54-2 (1985), p. 52-56.

Age of Empires 2 | Luring Wild Boars | Tips & Historical Trivia

I’ve been meaning to write this blog-post for a looong time. Actually, it is where it all started for me and my online Asinus persona. However, the more I delved into the topic, the more I discovered that the sum of my knowledge was close to nothing… I had to watch more videos and read more. All in all I spent several hundred hours on that very particular subject. I hope you will appreciate my findings. Please, let me know if I’ve forgotten anything! I will update my post accordingly. Thank you for reading and see you soon on my next blog posts.

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This blog post is dedicated to _LilTrouble, the kindest of all Age of Empires 2 streamers, who makes her streams feel like you’re in a lounge having a good time with friends.

Check her out on Twitch!

Skip Through the Boarshit!

This is a long post. And there are no potatoes. Sorry. So click on what sparks your interest to skip what you don’t want to read! And have fun 😉

How to Hunt Wild Boars in AoE2?

• The Danger of Hunting Wild Boars
  • The Pigs that Killed Kings

• 5 AoE2 Pro-Tricks to Lure Boars
  • The Farm Trick
  • Gaia’s Line of Sight
  • The House Trick
  • The Scout Save
  • The Town Center Fire

Intro

The first time I restarted Age of Empires 2 for an online game with my father and his colleagues, I just did nonsense. I sent my scout straight to my allies. I scouted my base with my villagers. I found three turkeys and didn’t look for the fourth one (though you always find cattle in even numbers). I just didn’t what a build order was!

11.

I got my ass served to me a few times by my father’s colleagues and I decided that I couldn’t suck at some twenty years old game anymore. My pride was tickled and it had to be answered. I started to learn what a build order was. Matthieu Macret puts it best:

“A build order defines the sequence in which buildings are constructed, units are produced and technologies are researched. Build orders target a specific strategy, such as rushing or timing attacks.“

Age of Empires 2 is a Real Time Strategy game that works on a very simple principle: the more ressources you have, the more military you can produce.

Once I acquired that little piece of knowledge, I went on to learn that boars, that I had always ignored, were to be hunted and their food collected. Hunting wild boars is however a dangerous activity in Age of Empires 2. That’s why I had always avoided it altogether in the past. Was it really necessary, though, to change my habits to improve my gameplay?

Yes.

It was.

Sorry to be blunt but first I thought I should serve you with a long ass demonstration. Eventually I decided against it. Age of Empires 2 is a Real Time Strategy game that works on a very simple principle: the more ressources you have, the more military you can produce. There is an element of sheer strategy to the game, but on the long run the player that has the best economy usually wins.

You just can’t ignore the free food boars represent. You need it.

How to get it, however, is another matter… for which I’m fully prepared to go on for a bit and boar you with details.

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How to Hunt Wild Boars in Age of Empires 2?

Toying with Danger

Hunting a wild boar is a dangerous business! You can help out your villagers by researching loom and grant them extra hit points and armor. However, loom costs 50 gold and researching it could slow your build order down if you aim for very early aggression. Also, sometimes you just don’t have the time to have it researched before you have to lure boars. It can happen on a Nomad map, for example.

Just watch the following clip from T90 Official YouTube channel and witness how Lierrey turns a bad start around with two successful very early boar lures.

The Shortest Pro-Player AoE2 Game You’ll Ever See

Lierrey is a pro-player and he makes it look very easy though he comes close to lose a villager. However, many a player have lost many a villager in unsuccessful boar luring attempts.

A few weeks back, a new meme was born to mock William McNabb who went on Twitter and asked the following in the wake of two more U.S.A. mass shootings and argued in favor of assault weapons: “Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?“

I’m not making this up. I found the original tweet back for you.

Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?

— Willie McNabb (@WillieMcNabb) August 4, 2019

It became an instant internet success (click on the link to read Joey Cosco’s very entertaining account of this viral moment). Of course, since Age of Empires 2 players have to face the danger of wild boars every early game, they just had to join in on the fun and they came up with some memes of their own.

[LEC/Meme] How do I kill these 30-50 Wild Boar while my villagers play? from aoe2

Not to hit you too hard and too soon with some concrete historical knowledge, but it was actually well-known in the Middle Ages that wild boar hunting was a dangerous business. The sole encounter of a sus scrofa (to call the wild boar by its latin scientific name) could lead to an ineluctable death. I just happen to know of a few stories about muredrous medieval piggies.

Should I briefly narrate two of those stories to you?

The Pigs that Killed Kings

Death of Prince/King Philip (1131) – Besançon, BM, ms. 677, f. 67v

October 13, 1131. Paris.

The City of Light was still haloed in darkness but the sun was high and bright on that fine and long-forgotten Tuesday. Prince Philip was only fifteen years old but he rode his horse as proud as a peacock.

Soon the name “Philip” was just as common as “Eudes” or “Raoul”.

He had many followers behind him. Not only was he a Prince, you see, he was actually a King. He’d been introduced to the fine art of ruling the realm at the ripe age of three years old. Six years later, he’d been coronated and anointed along his father at Reims. The rolls of chancery called him rex designatus or rex junior. His kingly title was therefore the most official thing.

The Capet Kings had taken the habit of crowning their successors and give them the regal title before their passing to ensure the future of their dynasty and favor the transition from an elective monarchy to a hereditary one.

Prince Philip was born on a windy day. His father was fat and his mother ugly. His Greek name was yet quite uncommon for his time, though he’d been called after his grand-father, Philip I.

Philip I had had a Byzantine princess for mother. Some unverifiable sources state that she descended from Macedonian Kings of old. That’s why, maybe, she gave her son the name of Alexander the Great’s father. It quickly caught up, however, and soon the name “Philip” was just as common as “Eudes” or “Raoul”.

Since he’d been anointed at Reims, Prince Philip was believed to have curing powers that he could channel through his hands. It was a gift that all the Kings of France shared and it made him a holy man despite his youth.

Never a death was deemed more unjust than this one. It was describe with the all the darkest words known to the Latin language: misera, miserabilis, horrenda, horribilis, atrox, turpis, ignominiosa, invidiosa, sordida, infamis, immunda.

Until the age of seven, Prince Philip remained in the company of ladies, that fed and cared for him. From then on he had the task to educate himself and to become a man. Such a noble achievement could only come through the arts of horse riding and weapon-wielding. It comes as no surprise then that Prince Philip, aged fifteen, ventured outside Paris on a hunting party.

Or maybe did he just escaped the city for a ride in the countryside with his friends? We do not know. Meanwhile, his father remains very busy in the capital, mustering his troops to face a few rebellious lords.

As evening lights dawned on Paris and the sun descended below the horizon, Prince Philip came back from his ride in the countryside and passed through a suburb. That is when the accident happened.

It all flashed in a minute and there was nothing anybody could have done.

A pig ran into the legs of Prince Philip’s steed. The horse panicked. The young King lost balance and fell from his horse. His head hurt a rock. The steed then trampled Prince Philip, fell and crushed him.

Philip’s fat father and ugly mother also decided to conceive a new child and to name him after their first born.

The fifteen-years-old King was somehow still alive and was brought to the nearest house but he was certainly doomed. His father was informed of the accident, rushed to his bedside and cursed the devil-sent pig. Prince Philip died overnight. The pope, who was en route to Reims, changed his travel plans to attend Prince Philip’s funerals in Paris.

Never a death was deemed more unjust than this one. It was describe with the all the darkest words known to the Latin language: misera, miserabilis, horrenda, horribilis, atrox, turpis, ignominiosa, invidiosa, sordida, infamis, immunda. It left a stain on the new regal dynasty that was difficult to overcome. However, the Capets managed to get over the dishonor Prince Philip’s death caused. He was buried within the next twelve days and his little brother, Louis, was anointed at Reims by the pope himself, shortly after that.

Philip’s fat father and ugly mother also decided to conceive a new child and to name him after their first born. This second Prince Philip, who never became King, received powerful ecclesiastical charges. Nonetheless he gave up the bishopric of Paris to Pierre Lombard. But that, my friends, is a story for another time.

Do you want to know more about the pig that killed a king? I would advise you to read Michel Pastoureau’s monograph: Le roi tué par un cochon (Paris: Seuil, 2015).

Death of Philip the Fair, King of France (1314) – Paris, BnF, fr. 226, f. 267v

The next story, for now, will tell you how Philip the Fair died, two centuries after Prince Philip, in 1314. It was more epic, however, since this time it happened during an actual hunting party, in a deep dark forest and not in the suburbs or Paris. It also enflammed the rich imagination of several great contemporary novelists of ours, as you shall see.

November 4, 1314. As the cold winds of winter closed in on the kingdom of France, its king chose to lead a hunting party in the cursed forest of Halatte. That is where Louis V met an untimely end in 987. The forest of Halatte had already taken one king. It could take another. Philip the Fair, however, didn’t let it scare him away. He plunged into the forest and hunted a wild boar with the vigor of a young man. He found a beast. He injured it. The beast threw itself under the feet of the king’s steed. Then, just like Prince Philip in 1131, Philip the Fair failed to maintain his balance and fell over. He broke his leg and the wild boar charged him. The beast was slain but King Philip IV proved to be badly injured. He was carried out of the forest and brought to Fontainebleau. He wished to stay alive until the day that a specific holy saint was celebrated. However, he died from his injuries a few days before the date. Many clerics saw that as a form of divine punishment. Philip the Fair hadn’t been very protective of the Church. He’d minted counterfeit money and robbed the Templars of all their belongings after he destroyed their order.

The untimely death of Philip the Fair and his harsh political choices actually gave birth to the legend that he’d been cursed by the Grand Master of the Knights Templar when the latter was burned at the stakes by order of the king. That curse then supposedly ran through many generations and it ultimately led to the Hundred Years’ War.

This legend served as the core concept of the best-selling novel series The Accursed Kings (originally published in French under the following title: Les Rois Maudits) written by Maurice Druon. It is worth of note, moreover, that ‘The Accursed Kings’ served as a major inspiration for ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ novel series, by G.R.R. Martin. The latter doesn’t even hide his admiration towards Druon and compares him to Alexandre Dumas, calling him “my hero”, also stating The Accursed Kings are “the original game of thrones”.

Do you think it is a sheer coincidence, thus, if Robert I Baratheon, G.R.R. Martin’s character and King of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, died from an unfortunate wild boar hunting party?

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The Fine Art of Luring a Wild Boar

Well! This is all fine and dandy, but let’s get down to business and talk about wild boar hunting in Age of Empires 2. The best way to collect their food is to lure them.

Legit question for Dark Age villagers: “What’s that all about?”

The Overall Concept

Spirit of the Law’s Tutorial about Wild Boar Hunting in Age of Empires 2

Let’s say you’re new to Age of Empires 2.

How do you hunt a wild boar? Do you send all your villagers right next to it, shoot it down, and transport the food back to your town center like a fresh newbie? Or better yet, do you build a mill next to the boar to facilitate the food gathering?

Meh.

In AoE2: Definitive Edition; a villager must only shoot a boar once to get it to chase him/her; a military unit, however, attempting to lame a wild boar, must hit it twice “to make it personal”

I know the wild boar is dangerous. I know kings have died because of it. I know very well that a single AoE2 villager stands no chance against such a beast. Yet, it is a villager alone that you have to send towards the wild boar from which you wish to collect food in order to create more villagers or early militia units.

There he goes, your villager. Look at him. Look at her! Your villager walks towards the wild boar with a bow in its hand. What do you do next?

Don’t panic.

If you want to lure a wild boar to your town center so that its food can be directly collected there, you villager will have to shoot the beast twice. Not once. Twice. If your villager injures a wild boar with only one arrow, the boar will not follow him or her. You need to tickle the beast for good. However, as soon as the boar has been shot twice, your villager must go back to your town center.

[Edit: This is no longer the case in AoE2: Definitive Edition; a villager must only shoot a boar once to get it to chase him/her; a military unit, however, attempting to lame a wild boar, must hit it twice “to make it personal”]

Assume that your villager is stupid because it is, indeed, a fact. Your villager will keep firing at the wild boar until he or she dies unless instructed otherwise. So don’t forget your boar hunting villager as you build a lumber camp, send another sheep to slaughter, or scout the enemy base. It will cost you food and time.

Assume that your villager is stupid because it is, indeed, a fact. Your villager will keep firing at the wild boar until he or she dies unless instructed otherwise.

Once nearing your town center, your injured boar hunting villager (for he or she will take a few hits!) can jump into it and your villagers butchering sheep right on that very same spot can now draw their attention to the beastly wild animal and kill it.

The job, finally, is done. However, so many things can go wrong… So here are a few more tricks to add your skillset if you want to become a top AoE2 player.

Seriously, who needs loom anyway?

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Exquisite Tips and Tricks

As I’ve stated before, boar hunting is some seriously dangerous business in Age of Empires 2. Many things can go wrong and any little mistake can slow you down by messing up your precious build order. You need to be careful, however, you can’t be solely focussed on your boar hunting business as you’re boar hunting.

I know. It can be confusing but pro-players call it APM. Actions per minute. How many actions can you achieve under one single minute? In RTS games, the more, the better.

While you’re boar hunting, you still have to manage the rest of your economy, keep an eye out for your enemy, build, scout, collect other ressources. The Dark Age isn’t as easy-peasy as it seems, nor as quiet. The five first minutes of a game can sometimes definitevely show if you’ll win or lose twenty to forty minutes later!

The Farm Trick

As far as I’m concerned, Age of Empires 2 is an exploration game as much as a strategy game. I remember spending hours, as a kid, exploring every single corner of the map with my scout. I was pretty devoted to the task. I wouldn’t multitask. I would only scout. I was also super focused on the technologies that widen your line of sight like town watch or town patrol. Because who needs horse collar and double-bit axe?

If you ever play against me online, be sure I’ll outpost rush you before I ever tower rush you. I know. I’m lethal.

The fog of war is really what separates the wannabe pros to the real pros.

I was rather surprised to meet people online who hated the fog of war with their guts. They only wanted to play on all-explored or all-visible maps. And it had to go fast, too.

Hey! Don’t bully my slow villagers. I don’t even pay them any wages. Fifty food is all they get to last the thousand-year span from the Dark Age to the Imperial Age…

However, the fog of war is really what separates the wannabe pros to the real pros. I mean, look at The Viper. Not only is he, like, super cute—Debbie, beware. He’s so cool behind his glasses that he’s like a blond Sakamoto.

The Viper, also, is obsessed with his boars. So much, in fact, that he slaughters them all mindlessly and yet still wonders where they all are every once in a while.

The Viper, also, is obsessed with his boars. So much, in fact, that he slaughters them all mindlessly and yet still wonders where they all are every once in a while. Location, location, location. The Viper is always very concerned with finding his wild boars. Now, if you happen to have scouted your entire starting base and you can’t find them, maybe that’s because they’re hidden in a little fog of war pocket. And if that ever happens, The Viper has a trick up his sleeve that can be useful to you: just build a farm over the fog of war to spot your missing wild boar.

Viper’s cool trick to find boar in fog of war from aoe2

The Viper Scouts Wild Boars by Placing Farms over the Fog of War

This is a very neat trick and one does not need witchcraft to conjure it. In order to lift the fog of war by placing a farm foundation, you need to place it on at least one tile of explored map area. That’s all folks!

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  Scouting by building farms in AoE2

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  Scouting by building farms in AoE2

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Gaia’s Line of Sight

Maybe you wonder. Why put a villager in danger if you can send your scout to lure a wild boar to your town center? Poke it twice, turn back and gallop towards your town center: job done! But, is it? The problem with the scout is that he’s too fast for the boar. Meaning a wild boar pursuing a scout will quickly lose sight of it and, at that point, drop the chase to return to its starting position.

The problem is, as T-West the Wise teaches us, that a regular AoE2 wild boar has a three tile line of sight. If you venture out of that three tile radius, the boar stops pursuing you.

However.

The really interesting thing is this.

A wild boar shares the line of sight of every Gaia unit on the map. This includes deer, wolves, birds, and even holy relics! Therefore, once you hit a boar with a scout, as long as that scout remains into the line of sight of any Gaia unit, the boar will continue to chase you.

T-West’s Tutorial about Wild Boar Hunting and Taking Advantage of Gaia’s Line of Sight

It can be quite tricky to master the skill of getting a wild boar to chase you beyond its own line of sight. The following clip shows the pro-player MbL failing at the attempt. And yet, MbL is usually so successful in AoE2 boar hunting that he got nicknamed ‘the Boar Whisperer’ and the ‘Master Boar Lamer’.

What went wrong for him here is that his scout, which tries to lure a second boar to the town center, didn’t enter the three tile line of sight of the first boar that was being lured by a villager. He left the three tile radius of the boar it was supposed to lure and failed to remain into Gaia’s line of sight. Therefore, the second boar returned to its starting position.

MbL Fails at Taking Advantage of Gaia’s Line of Sight

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The House Trick

The scout may be too fast for a boar to pursue, but the boar has no problem to chase down a villager and rip it into pieces. Nevertheless, you feel confident enough to send out a villager to lure a boar. You know you won’t forget that villager and make it turn back on time to save his or her life. But, will you? There are many sounds in Age of Empires 2 that can rattle you and distract you from your wild boar lure. I guess you know them all by now.

If you’re sending a villager to lure your second boar, the most probable sound that will distract you is the population limit alert. You’re being housed. Deal with it urgently or fear that your town center will remain idle a second to long.

AoE2 Sound. Limit population reached

You’ve build a house? Nice.

AoE2 Sound. House built

That’s when you hear this…

AoE2 Sound. Female villager death

AoE2 Sound. Male villager death

Because of your bad APM, you couldn’t save your villager on time. He or she’s been killed by the boar. What a disaster, loss of time and resource. You should just call the GG right now and forget about this whole mess.

Something else could have distracted you. If you’ve send a villager to build a forward barrack, you have a 100% chance that this villager is going to be attacked by a wolf.

AoE2 Sound. Wolf attack

By the time you go and deal with it, again, your boar luring villager will be dead.

13. Sure! Blame it on your ISP.

AoE2 Taunt. 13. Sure! Blame it on your ISP.

That’s not all. If you’re playing a team game, or a diplomacy game, maybe another player is trying to show you something on the map, and you hear that sound.

AoE2 Sound. Mark on the map

You check it out, you’re APM is still shit because you’re below the 1.5k ELO despite the fact that you’ve played AoE2 non-stop for six months, bim, you’re boar luring villager is… yet again… dead. Do you feel the rage building up?

“Good. Gooood!”

More seriously, what do you do? Please, follow The Viper’s advice and save your villager’s life with the neat and amazing ‘house trick’. Basically, what you have to do is to place the foundations of a house over a boar to stop it in its course. It is, however, very difficult to achieve properly. Your execution must be on point.

The Viper’s Tip of the Day #2

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The Scout Save

What does a diligent scout do? He scouts, he attac, but most importantly, he circles bac!

You can task your scout different missions at the beginning of a game. Scouting your base should be your first priority to find out your starting cattle (sheep, or turkeys, or cows, or whatever), your main and secondary golds, your main and secondary stones, several wood lines to chop wood from and, of course, last but not least, your boars. There should always be two (or more, depending on the map) not too far away from your town center.

Once the elementary scouting is out of the way, here are a few things your scout can do.

First, he can go on and locate the enemy base. An early scouting of your enemy can also inform you of his/her strategy depending of his/her build order. Do you see a barrack already up? Beware of the drush. You’ll soon have militia units heading your way to disturb your economy. Do you spot villagers mining stone in Dark Age? Beware of the trush! You’ll soon see enemy villagers going forward to build towers in order to deny you the access to your own resources. Therefore it is useful to send your scout towards your enemy and see what’s what.

However, your scout can do more.

Once at your enemy base, he can hit one of your enemy’s wild boar and try to bring it back to your own base. It is tricky, though, because you’ll have to cross the entire map. More on that and the laming of boars in the next section of this blog post, though.

Otherwise, your scout can also play the good stay-at-home scout and ‘push deer’ towards your town center. It is very tricky to do. Maybe I’ll develop on it in another blog post.

Eventually, another use of a stay-at-home scout is to save your villagers from boar attacks. If you manage to place your scout between your boar luring villager and the wild boar chasing him or her, you can slow the boar down and save your villager’s life.

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The Town Center Fire

At this point, the boar has been located, successfully lured and brought back to your town center. There is only one thing left to master: how to look like a total pro. You can weaken the wild boar you lure with town center fire to prevent your villagers to loose hit points and keep a full health. It is especially practical if you expect early aggression from your opponent and fear that he will ‘snipe’ your weak villagers.

The traditional build order will have you to assign your six first villagers on sheep and the following four on wood. That’s when you’re supposed to go lure your second boar. I don’t wait that long myself: I send my seventh villager straight to the nearest boar I found. I don’t know if it really matters, I’m not a pro-player. However, as you lure your first boar to your town center, you can garrison your six butcher villagers in your town center and weaken the boar by firing it twice. Be careful, though, if you kill the wild boar with the town center its food will be lost! I leave Spirit of the Law give you the full detail of it.

Spirit of the Law’s Tutorial about TC Firing a Wild Boar

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What Should Be Tarantino’s Next And Last Movie?

Disclaimer: This blogpost is nothing but free mindless rambling. Don’t mind it.

This blogpost also contains spoilers. Be warned.

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I bet Tarantino gets all riled up when he reads history books. Why? I’m gonna tell you why.

Have you seen Inglourious Bastards, Django Unchained and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood or did you live under a rock for the past few years? Well, if you’ve seen those movies, you’d understand that Tarantino is not a big fan of how History actually played out and that he’s got a lot to say about it.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

I walked into the theater not knowing who Sharon Tate was and how she died. If I did, I would have been clinging at the edge of my seat like my father did next to me, dreading every scene where we see her living carefree and having a good time. Mindhunter, season 2, should have put me on the right track, though. Alarm bells would then have ringed in my head. Instead, I just witnessed Margot Robbie living the ultimate bourgeois life and I was like… ‘Uh, yeah. She’s rich! We get it! Can we go back to Leonardo now?’ I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Roman Polansky, Sharon Tate’s husband, was Rick Dalton’s neighbor—Rick Dalton being the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Let me brush out the story for you in case you didn’t see the movie.

The Synopsis

Rick Dalton was a big time Western actor who’s now reaching the end of his rope. His best bud, personal chauffeur and stunt double, Cliff Booth, drives him everywhere. As Rick Dalton tries to make the most out of his roles as a ‘heavy’ despite strong addiction issues towards alcohol and tobacco that turns him into a living mess, Cliff Booth remembers the time he fought off Bruce Lee and lets young girls entice him into borderline hitchhiking drives. Meanwhile Sharon Tate goes to the movies and enjoys watching herself in The Wrecking Crew being a goof and a bad ass.

Cliff Booth eventually drives a teenage girl back at Spahn Ranch, where Rick Dalton used to shoot his prime-time TV show Bounty Law. Of course, Cliff Booth knows the place. He also knows the owner. That’s why he feels there’s something fishy when he witnesses lots of teenagers, mostly young girls, squatting the place and living an obviously shady lifestyle. It all ends up with Cliff Booth knocking someone’s teeth out and driving away.

Six months later, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth come back from Italy where Rick starred in spaghetti westerns, made some money and met his new wife, Francesca Capucci. They plan for one last night out together. Rick doesn’t have the money to support his friend anymore and he has to let him go. They go to the restaurant. They come back home. Cliff goes walking his dog, a gorgeous pit bull, and he smokes an LSD cigarette he bought six months ago to the hippie girl he drove to Spahn Ranch. On the other hand, Rick mixes himself some margarita. He’s far from over his alcoholism. That’s when four ‘hippies’ from Spahn Ranch drive up to his house in a noisy old car. They intend to get into the Polansky residence and kill everyone they find up there, but Rick gets on the porch and starts to yell at them. He orders them to drive away and smoke pot someplace else. We see that they have weapons but they do drive away. Rick then goes to relax on his swimming pool, listening to music with a head set on.

Cliff comes back from his walk and the LSD starts to work its magic on his brain. He gets into the living room and prepares food for his beautiful big dog. All of a sudden, three of the four hippies who’d driven up to Rick’s house barge into the living room. Cliff finds himself surrounded. He laughs it off as the LSD keeps messing up with his brain, then he summons his dog to kill two of the three hippies. It all turns into a very gory scene. One of the wannabe murderers ends up in the pool and scares Rick to death, who retrieves a flame thrower from his shed and crisps her to death.

It is all very enjoyable.

The Historical Significance of the Movie

Right after I was the movie, I walked my father back to the tramway station. That’s when he revealed to me that Sharon Tate had been actually killed by indoctrinated hippies led by the infamous Charlie Manson.

Charlie Manson! The serial killer at the head of the Manson Family that we see being interviewed by the FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench in Mindhunter? Wait. Wait-wait-wait!

Before I continue, can I address Rick’s awesome flamethrower for a minute?

Inglourious Bastards: Killing Nazis Is Always Fun!

At the beginning of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood we have a short summary of Rick Dalton’s cinematic career. Among other things he’s depicted handling a flamethrower in a movie where he kills Nazi officers from up a ledge. Who cannot be reminded, watching that scene, of the ending of Inglourious Basterds, when Brad Pitt (who plays Cliff Booth in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and was Aldo Raine in Inglourious Basterds) rained bullets on Nazis from box seats in a burning movie theater? It all weaves together very well. It also starts to redeem Leonardo DiCaprio within Tarantino’s own cinematographic universe.

When a Villain is Not the Villain

Remember Django Unchained? Leonardo played the despicable Calvin Candie in that movie, a true villain at heart.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood shows strong meta-cinematographic language. In the opening scenes Al Pacino, who’s cast as a movie producer, tells Rick/Leonardo that when people see him on screen, they don’t see the role he plays, but they still remember him as the hero of Bounty Law.

It’s a bit like when we say ‘Hey! That’s Frodo!’ when watching Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

Anyway, that dialogue is basically Tarantino telling us, the spectators, that since we see Leonardo DiCaprio on screen in one of his movies, we could think that he plays a villain again. But, no! This time around, he’s not a villain. As Rick/Leonardo tells it to Al Pacino, he was asked to play the ‘heavy’, the bad guy, but he’s a good guy himself and we quickly pick up on this despite his high-functioning alcoholism.

It is all ‘justified’ when we see Rick on set for his next Western movie whilst Cliff drives his hippie hitchhiker back to Spahn Ranch. Rick portrays a villain and he plays it very, very well! Ian McShane would be very proud of DiCaprio’s Swearagen look-alike. At least I got some closure from the open ending of Deadwood and I hope Timothy Oliphant did too.

I got sidetracked there for a second, but yes, people, Leonardo is a good guy in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and even if he was a most convincing villain in Django Unchained, he was only so convincing because he’s a damn fine actor! Do you get it? Leonardo/Rick is a good guy now, and so is Brad/Cliff, but you knew that already. You love him since Inglourious Basterds.

The same thing kind of happened to Christoph Waltz. He was a villain in Inglourious Basterds. He became a hero in Django Unchained. However, the meta-text around that villain-hero shift was maybe not as sophisticated as what we witness in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. By the way, did you know that Leonardo DiCaprio was supposed to play the villain in Inglourious Basterds? Yeah, so there are some good reasons for Tarantino to pause the story and tell us that DiCaprio is only a ‘pretense’ villain.

I hope I haven’t lost you there. Anyway, let’s proceed.

The Chekhov’s Gun of Justice

Rick had a role where he killed Nazis with a flamethrower. It reminds us of Inglourious Basterds. It is also some strong foreshadowing! It means that divine justice, again, is going to be served, and it is indeed when Rick flames down one of the Manson Family members who broke into his house to kill him instead of attacking the Polansky residence. Also, by the time we see him pull out the flame thrower from his shed, we’ve totally forgotten about it and that, people, is a great take on Chekhov’s gun. It was especially effective on me as an unaware spectator. I didn’t know Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family. I didn’t know why she was in that movie as Rick’s neighbor. I was just enjoying DiCaprio play his role like a motherf*cking wizard. I believed every single scene he played, every single one of his spits.

The Typical American Hero

Tomb of an American Soldier at the Omaha Beach Memorial Cemetary, 15/08/2010 (c) Stéphane Bloch

We’ve now dealt with the superficial layer of meta-cinematographic language within Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: forget about Calvin Candie, Rick/Leonardo is not an actual villain. Now, let’s dig deeper and see why and how he’s an actual American hero in its purest form.

Rick biggest acting job ‘back in the old days’ was to star in Bounty Law as a bounty hunter. Welcome to the Tarantino Cinematic Universe, who else was a bounty hunter? Django! So, not only is Tarantino telling us that Rick/Leonardo shouldn’t be mistaken for his role in Django Unchained as Calvin Candie, he also tells us that Rick is Django.

Now, who was Django do you ask? He was a slave-owner killer, pretty much like Cliff/Brad/Aldo was a Nazi killer in Inglourious Basterds—in case I should I remind you that Nazi enslaved millions of people to boost their military industry when they didn’t send them straight to death camps (you really must watch La Vita È Bella in addition to the Schindler’s List in case you didn’t know).

Also, have you seen The Longest Day? That’s kind of a big deal here. Let’s forget for a minute that John ‘The Duke’ Wayne had poor political views, as Trumbo reminds us, and let’s track back to his Western movie roles as John Ford’s favorite lead actor.

John Wayne was cast in The Longest Day as Lt. Col. Benjamin H. Vandervoort, CO, 2^nd Battalion, 505^th Parachute Infantry Regiment. As such he had the duty to pep talk and prep the troops for D-Day. Ha! That good old D-Day… Did you know that The Longest Day, the movie, was actually drafted from a book of the same name, written by the non-historian-Irish-journalist-married-to-an-American-novelist Cornelius Ryan? When he wrote The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan built the D-Day into a three-act storyline which cast the American soldiers as trueborn freedom fighters. This take on the D-Day was basically written out to become an all-star movie and John Wayne just had to star in it. He’d been the typical cowboy American hero for years at that point and he couldn’t miss out on the morphing of the typical American hero from cowboy, to private. The cowboy had conquered and tamed the Wild West and brought civilization to a savage land. The private was to pursue the cowboy’s work by taking the Frontier a tad further and ensuring that all the people on Earth were enjoying the bliss of democracy, law and freedom. The cowboy faced the barren lands and built a perfect country from the ground up. The private now faced the wicked who threatened what the cowboy built. John Wayne, who’d been the cowboy, was now the officer telling the private how to carry on a long legacy of heroism.

Despite the fact that he has to play the ‘heavy’, Rick/Leonardo ticks all the boxes of the typical American hero. From within the Tarantino Cinematic Universe (since we’ve stated that it was actually a thing), Rick/Leonardo is a bounty hunter and that equates him to Django, the ultimate Tarantino freedom fighter. However, Tarantino is also weaving threads that link his movie to the overall history of cinema. Rick/Leonardo is portrayed as a Golden Age Western actor, pretty much like John Wayne, even though he delves into starring into Spaghetti Westerns (and hates it). Therefore Rick/Leonardo is both the American hero who brings civilization and who safeguards freedom. He is a pioneer (therefore that is no coincidence that he actually settled in Hollywood) and a gatekeeper (which is why his house is next to the Polansky’s residence gate).

The Gates of Heaven

It brings me to my next point. In Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Sharon Tate played by the delightful Margot Robbie stands as the allegory of freedom. Her house on the top of the Hollywood hills is basically the biblical ‘City on a Hill’. Everywhere she goes, she’s carefree. She does whatever she wants. She doesn’t even pay to enter the theater. It actually means that even money has no grasp on her. Her lifestyle embodies the idea of freedom. When they kill the member of the Manson Family, Rick and Cliff don’t only symbolically avenge Sharon Tate on screen, they also avenge the very idea of freedom.

What do we do to Nazis and slave owners? We kill them. And we make it fun!

In case you didn’t notice, freedom is kind of a big deal to Tarantino. Also, he’s the one who ties it to the Middle Ages in Django Unchained. So, let’s talk about that too.

Django Unchained: Freedom is a Medieval Dream

The Middle Ages saw the birth of an amazing literature that influenced Western culture, I would argue, to a far bigger extent than mythological stories inherited from the Romans and the Greeks. I will try not to go full geek on you, because I could just as easily pitch in the Lord of the Rings in this blog post with the literature masterpiece I’m about to mention, but among the great works of literature that the Middle Ages gave us, there is the Nibelungenlied. It includes a magic ring that makes you invisible. Do you catch my drift? It is also the story that Dr. King Schultz narrates to Django around their campfire when he learns that Django’s wife is called Broomhilda.

Broomhilda was a princess. She was a daughter of Wotan, god of all gods.

Anyway, her father is really mad at her. She disobeys him in some way. So he puts her on top of the mountain.

It’s a German legend, there’s always going to be a mountain in there somewhere.

And he puts a fire-breathing dragon there to guard the mountain. And he surrounds her in a circle of hellfire. And there, Broomhilda shall remain … unless a hero arises brave enough to save her.

As a matter of fact, he does. A fella named Siegfried. He scales the mountain, because he’s not afraid of it. He slays the dragon, because he’s not afraid of him. And he walks through hellfire … because Broomhilda’s worth it.

Tarantino takes quite a few liberties from the original story. It is not totally innocent also that the Niebelungenlied became a famous Wagner opera but I’ve already piled up enough Godwin points in this blogpost that I don’t need to stray on that. All that really matters is that Tarantino directly sets up Django Freeman as a modern Siegfried through the parallel of their respective love interests.

So.

Tarantino likes it R-rated.

He likes heroes that battle against true-life villains (Nazis, slave owners, Manson family members) and right wrongs by providing an alternative ending to upsetting historical events.

Tarantino also somehow traces the quest for freedom back to medieval legends.

Why, then, wouldn’t he go medieval on our eyes for his last movie?

He could, I don’t know, avenge Joan of Arc and have La Hire and Poton de Xaintrailles free her from her prison, killing everyone on their path, evil English and treacherous French alike.

I mean, if he needs a historical consultant, he can always call me!

It’d be better than any Star Trek movie, that’s for sure…

Age of Empires 2 | Joan of Arc. 2, The Maid of Orléans | Guide, Tips & Historical Review

This blog post also available in French!

I fell in love with Joan of Arc thanks to Age of Empires 2. I never healed from it. As Ovid says: “Quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis.” There is no remedy to love.

Tower of Beaurevoir © Stéphane Bloch, 19/07/2013

Once I started to study History at the university, I met Joan again. I discovered her through new lenses. I read the papers and scholarly books written about her. I read the original sources from the 15^th century. Her voice sounded clear to me when I read her trial. I saw her proud gait whilst perusing medieval chronicles. Then I visited Picardy and many places she went. I walked near the tower she jumped from when she tried to escape the English.

In the following paragraphs it will look like I’m dismantling piece by piece the second scenario of Joan of Arc’s campaign in Age of Empires 2. However this is a love letter more than anything. Age of Empires 2 is a fantastic video game to discover the Middle Ages. There is much to say about the scenarios and the in-game encyclopedia, but that’s only for the better when you really think of it.

Tower of Beaurevoir, from afar © Stéphane Bloch, 19/07/2013

Intro: Joan of Arc’s Campaign, Second Scenario

March 26, Chinon.

It is one thing for a band of dispirited soldiers to put their trust in a teenage girl. It is entirely another for that girl to be given command of the army of an entire nation.

We were filled with pride when we heard the Dauphin’s heralds pronounce Joan the Maid as Commander of the Army of France.

So that she may look like a general, the Dauphin presented Joan with a great warhorse and a suit of white armor.

Joan instructed me to look for an ancient sword buried beneath the altar of a local church.   

I was skeptical, but not only did the men unearth a rusted blade, but we found that the sword belonged to Charlemagne, grandfather of France. I shall not doubt her word again. Still visible on the hilt was the fleur-de-lis.

Joan adopted the fleur-de-lis as her symbol and had it blazoned upon her battle standard. Wherever Joan goes, the standard goes also. It goes with us to Orléans.    

The City of Orléans is one of the finest in France, but it is under siege by our enemies, England and Burgundy, and is about to fall.   

This war has dragged on for one hundred years with precious few French victories. The people of Orléans need a savior. They are to get Joan of Arc.

Pentesilea, Queen of the Amazons, leading the charge – Bruxelles, KBR, ms. 9392, f. 18v

Commentary

This, for one, is a wonderful text. It really helps us to connect with Joan’s story on an emotional level. However, it is filled with inaccuracies…

Though Joan’s brothers were given nobility titles after the victory of Orléans, she was never invested of any official military title. The “Commander of the Army of France” was the ‘connétable’ and that man, since 1425, was Arthur of Bretagne, count of Richemont. Connétables were chosen for life. Richemont himself had fallen into disgrace because of his political actions (he had drowned the king’s favorite courtier) but he still held on his title. Right under him were the ‘maréchaux’ and those titles had also already been handed out to other aristocrats.

Regarding Joan’s famous sword, it didn’t belong to Charlemagne… First off, the fleur-de-lis only became a symbol of the French royalty during the 12^th century, once coat of arms were properly invented. It couldn’t have been Charlemagne’s emblem. Secondly, the sword was not miraculously found, dug up or given to Joan. It was merely an ex-voto that caught her eye when she went in pilgrimage to Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois on her way to Chinon.

Finally, when Joan arrived to Orléans the Burgundians had already lifted the siege. Poton de Xaintrailles, La Hire’s brother in arm, had risked a dangerous diplomatic move. He’d offered to open Orléans to the Duke of Burgundy if he could insure the safety of its inhabitants. Philip the Good wished for nothing less but it angered the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France. The two men were at odds since Anne of Burgundy had passed away. Sister to Philip the Good and Bedford’s former wife, she’d already saved the Anglo-Burgundian alliance in the past and her death left the alliance in tatters. Therefore, the English were left alone to besiege Orléans.

1.1. The Map: Orléans surrounded

Age of Empires 2 (1999). Joan of Arc’s Campaign. Scenario 2: The Maid of Orléans

In this scenario we find three French cities: Chinon and Blois, south of the Loire, controlled by the artificial intelligence, and Orléans, north of the Loire, which the player takes over as soon as he steps into it.

Orléans is threatened by four British fortresses, two north of the city, which produce long swordsmen, longbowmen and mangonels, plus two other, south of the city, which produce battering rams and knights.

Furthermore, the Burgundians are still in play, though it is historically inaccurate. They send up spearmen to attack Orléans along other units.

Since all those units will continuously attack the player, he will have to produce a vast variety of counter units to push back the AI efficiently. It will be tricky to balance an economy properly to that end, however, with a population capped at 75…

1.2. The Siege of Orléans

Plan de la ville et du siège d’Orléans en 1428. Jollois restituit ; Harttweig sculpsit

Historically speaking, Orléans was surrounded by English bastions, mainly west to the city. John Talbot, knight of the Order of the Garter, was commanding those fortified places himself. He’d been a real thorn in the shoe of the French since he landed on the Continent, back in 1427. The British also had a few bastions eastwards, but first and foremost they occupied the ‘Bastille des Tourelles’ that closed the Loire bridge. It forced the people of Orléans to destroy the bridge so that it couldn’t be crossed, contrarily to what the player can do in the Age of Empires 2 scenario.

For its defense, Orléans had no less than thirty towers along its walls and barricades also blocked the city access in the suburbs. Churches also could serve as fortified places. However, the people of Orléans struggle every day a bit more to ration their food and they urgently needed supplies to maintain their spirits up.

2.1. How the scenario plays out

The second scenario of Joan of Arc’s campaign has a few surprises but it plays in a quite straightforward fashion. It starts at Chinon with the Duke of Alençon greeting Joan. He moves towards her on his gorgeous steed: “I’m the Duke d’Alençon, my Lady. I will proudly ride with you to Orléans.”

From that point in the very southern corner of the map, Joan, Alençon and their troops ride to Blois where they will meet the king’s army. On their way they’ll fight out a little ambush if they don’t avoid it, but when they reach Blois, the player gets a full load of knights, crossbowmen and trade carts to provide Orléans in resources. Those trade carts must reach the city town center, not the market, for the resources to be collected by the player.

Plan de l’ancien Pont d’Orléans et de ses abords avec ses bastilles et boulevards, le fort des Tournelles et la bastille des Augustins. Jollois restituit

Exiting Blois, Joan can reach Orléans through the dirt path leading to the Loire bridge but that’ll force her into an early battle against Burgundian troops guarding the access. However, transport ships are waiting to help the player across the river and out of harm way. Whatever the choice taken by the player, Joan and the French army reach Orléans through one of its two southern gates.

Once into Orléans, the objective is quite simple: keep the city cathedral safe, maintain Joan of Arc alive and destroy one of the four English castles. Whenever the trade carts get to the city forum, the player gets resources and he can start to build his economy with the few villagers he finds in Orléans.

Rooftop view of the Cathedral of Orléans

The easiest and quickest way to win the scenario, however, is to get to Castle Age as soon as the trade carts get to Orléans forum. Forget about the economy altogether. Cross back the river Loire with a few villagers and build a siege workshop at the back of the southern British fortress. As soon as you can create a few battering rams, break down the British walls, get inside their base and ram down their castles. The knights you get in Blois can also swoop in for extra damages: the castles don’t have the murder holes technology.

Now, if you want to play really tricky, though it requires a bit of skills, station your knights between the two southern British fortresses, wait for villagers to open the gates while passing through it to gather resources, rush into the enemy base and bring fire the old fashion way: through good old sword repetitive smacking.

2.2. How History played out

“Orléans, la Loire et ses îles lors du siège de 1429. Première expédition de Jeanne d’Arc : ravitaillement d’Orléans”

First things first: the Duke of Alençon has nothing to do in this scenario. He only comes up in Joan’s saga much later, notably during the siege of Paris. The real historical character who supervised the military operations on the French side was the bastard of Orléans, Jean Dunois. La Hire, who is introduced to the Age of Empires 2 player in the next scenario, was also of the party.

In summary, the French army commanded by the maréchal de Boussac, in company of La Hire, Joan of Arc and a convoy of supplies, journey from Blois to Orléans. In order to reach the besieged city, they decide to go around it from the east and cross the Loire River on transport ships. The bastard of Orléans waits firmly for the resupply and supervise the crossing.

Dunois (the bastard of Orléans) and St John the Evangelist, witnessing the Last Judgement ~ London, BL, Yale Thompson MS 3, f. 32v.

When she meets Dunois, Joan is upset. She demands why they didn’t cross west of Orléans, where the English are the most heavily fortified, where John Talbot who commands the troops is located. Dunois is flabbergasted by Joan’s audacity. She dare answer that the advice she brings is better than his, for she’s sent by God. At that point, the wind was not favorable for a crossing. All of a sudden it changed and Dunois interpreted it as a miracle, when he talked about it years later during Joan’s second trial.

The maréchal de Boussac and the French army, however, turn back to Blois. Joan of Arc, La Hire and the resupply convoy cross the Loire. They briefly rest at Reuilly with Dunois then ride to Orléans. The English garrisoned in the bastille of Saint-Loup attempt to attack the convoy but last minute reinforcements from Orléans distract them from their purpose. Joan and the convoy arrive in Orléans untouched to the great relief of the population. One man get so close to Joan to better see her that he actually puts her sleeve on fire with his torch. The disaster is fortunately avoided.

Far to dictate the strategy, Joan is kept in the dark. Nothing is shared to her. The bastard of Orléans and the faithfull captains of Charles VII talk shop without her. When she awakes from a nap, Joan says she saw in a dream that French blood was spilled. She puts on her armor and gallops out of Orléans. She reaches the French troops attacking Saint-Loup and the place is taken.

The bastille of the Augustins is next to fall, then the French mount an attack against the Tourelles, which guards the bridge entry facing Orléans. All day long, the French troops can’t overcome the English defenders of the fortress. Nevertheless, thanks to Joan’s last galvanizing speech, they gather their last drops of courage and eventually conquer the place. The French army based in Blois has now a freeway to enter Orléans. John Talbot is forced to leave and empties the last English strongholds parked around the besieged city.

The liberation of the Loire can finally begin.

Outro: Joan of Arc’s Campaign, Second Scenario

Joan prophesied that she would be wounded at Orléans. At the height of the battle, an arbalest bolt knocked her from her horse. We could not believe our misfortune.

But as we carried Joan away from the carnage, the battle was won. Orléans was free.

When we entered the city, the entire population cheered us on from windows, rooftops, and city streets.

They fired artillery into the night sky and shouted aloud their nickname for Joan: ‘La Pucelle’—The Maid of Orléans.

Commentary

Joan actually predicted her injury. As he travelled to Lyon for the sake of his master, the Duke of Brabant, the lord of Rotselaar gave news from Charles VII’s court. His letter, dated from April 22th, 1429, mentions that a young woman swore to liberate Orléans, but that she will be injured during the battle. The attack of the bastille des Tourelles happened two weeks after this letter was sent and Joan is indeed struck by a range weapon in the morning, right in the shoulder. Her prediction is also stated in other sources. To this day the historians remain fascinated.

Joan, once injured, cries. However, she refuses to be healed through witchcraft. She takes the arrow out of her shoulder herself, with nothing else than olive oil and a piece of cloth to ease her pain. She goes back to battle. As the evening drops, the day seems lost but she carries on. “Fear not, the place is ours!” she shouts as she sees her banner close to the fortress walls, pointing out to everybody where to strike. The French muster their morale, dive once more into the breach and eventually conquers the Tourelles in a last assault that will become unforgettable.

The night proceeds with careful celebrations as Talbot hasn’t left yet. However, no artillery fired into the night sky. Canons shot at the start of a siege. The bells rang, from all over the city. Gathered in churches, the people of Orléans and their defenders sang the Te Deum Laudamus that Joan had had the French army sing when they left Blois. It wasn’t Joan who was celebrated, but God.

Close your eyes, picture the cathedral of Orléans and transport yourself back to 1429. Your own mind remains the best time travelling machine.

Top 3 overlooked facts

The very last assault on the Tourelles gave place to great moments which are worth remembering.

The Loire Bridge had been partly destroyed. Seeing that the fight reached no conclusion, the people of Orléans decided to help out their allies. They threw planks across the long narrow bridge. The first one to come forth was a Knight Hospitaller, Nicolas de Giresme. His crossing was perceived as a miracle.

The English captains, however, were not so lucky… The drawbridge of the Tourelles collapses under their very feet and they all drown in the Loire. According to an Italian merchant relating the events of the siege, the drawbridge collapsed because of a demolition ship prepped on Joan of Arc’s orders, then moved forward at the most strategic moment!

Silent and deadly.

Finally, as the English withdrawn from their strongholds, a war prisoner, the bastard of Bar, managed to escape his jailers in a way nothing short of fabulous. He gets the personal priest and confessor of John Talbot to carry him to Orléans! Not only does he come back to reinforce his friends, but he also hands them a very valuable informant.

Historians still debate today on Joan’s real impact over the commandment of the French army. It is rather excluded that she ever held any official title or ordered the troops herself, even if the most daring historians have argued that he left a “legacy”. She feared no danger, she was pro-active on the battlefield, she never backed down from a fight. In that, however, she was La Hire’s perfect pupil, minus the wisdom and experience. Nevertheless, without her, it is undisputable that the Tourelles wouldn’t have been conquered the day they were and the siege of Orléans could have dragged on more.

The English were already in a pickle. Their alliance with the Burgundians was in tatters and the earl of Salisbury, their military genius, was dead during the first days of the siege of Orléans. The town, meanwhile, was defended by the best and bravest, the cream of the French army. La Hire, Poton de Xaintrailles, their brothers and their friends were all there. They had no pompous title but they counted among the most professional soldiers in France at the time.

Joan of Arc only put more oil on a fire the fire and the tide was already turning against the English. Yet it takes nothing away from her bravery, her valor and her charm, that History consecrated forever.

More About Joan:

• The Day Joan of Arc Ran Out of Sass (And Why She’s Such a Touching Figure)
• How Joan of Arc Died

“La Pucelle d’Orléans” – Soluce et commentaire

Do you wish to read this blog post in English?

Age of Empires 2 m’a fait tombé amoureux de Jeanne d’Arc. Il s’agit d’un amour dont je n’ai jamais guéri. Comme le dit Ovide : « Quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis ». Il n’existe aucun remède à l’amour.

Tower of Beaurevoir © Stéphane Bloch, 19/07/2013

Une fois entré à l’université, j’ai redécouvert Jeanne d’Arc à la lumière de mes études. Elle m’apparaissait désormais au travers des recherches historiques et des sources d’époque. J’ai entendu sa voix en lisant son procès. J’ai perçu sa fière allure à la lecture des chroniques. Ensuite j’ai visité la Picardie et j’ai découvert des endroits où elle s’était rendue. J’ai marché au pied de la tour, à Beaurevoir, dont elle aurait sauté pour tenter de se sauver des Anglais.

Dans les paragraphes qui suivent, je vais démonter pièce par pièce le scénario du siège d’Orléans dans Age of Empires 2. Néanmoins, il s’agit bien d’une lettre d’amour. Age of Empires 2 est un jeu fantastique pour découvrir le Moyen Âge et s’intéresser à son histoire. Il y a beaucoup à redire sur les scénarios et l’encyclopédie du jeu, mais ce n’est que pour le mieux.

Tower of Beaurevoir, from afar © Stéphane Bloch, 19/07/2013

Intro

26 mars, Chinon

Remettre toute sa confiance en une jeune fille, pour une bande de soldats abattus, ce n’est pas rien. Mais pour cette jeune fille, se retrouver à la tête de l’armée de toute une nation, c’est bien autre chose.

Nous étions gonflés d’orgueil quand nous avons entendu les hérauts du Dauphin déclarer Jeanne la Pucelle, Chef de l’Armée de France.

Pour que Jeanne ait l’allure d’un général, le Dauphin lui a offert un cheval de bataille et une armure blanche.

Jeanne m’a chargé d’aller chercher une ancienne épée sous l’autel d’une église.

J’étais sceptique et pourtant non seulement les hommes ont déterré un fer rouillé mais nous avons découvert que cette épée avait appartenu à Charlemagne, le père de la France. Je ne douterai plus jamais de ses paroles. La fleur de lys se voyait encore sur la poignée.

Jeanne a adopté la fleur de lys comme symbole, qu’elle a fait représenter sur son étendard de bataille. Partout où Jeanne allait, son étendard la suivait. Et il nous a accompagné jusqu’à Orléans.

La ville d’Orléans est l’une des plus belles villes de France mais elle est assiégée par nos ennemis, l’Angleterre et la Bourgogne et elle est sur le point de succomber.

Cette guerre dure depuis cent ans avec de rares victoires françaises. Le peuple d’Orléans a besoin d’un sauveur. Ils auront Jeanne d’Arc.

Pentesilea, Queen of the Amazons, leading the charge – Bruxelles, KBR, ms. 9392, f. 18v

Commentaire

Ce texte est magnifique et il nous investit de façon très émotionnelle dans les aventures de Jeanne. Toutefois, il est parsemé d’erreurs…

Si les frères de Jeanne d’Arc ont été anoblis après la victoire d’Orléans, elle-même ne reçut jamais le moindre titre officiel au sein de l’armée du roi. Le « chef de l’armée de France » était le connétable, et ce titre appartenait en 1429 à Arthur de Bretagne, comte de Richemont. Il s’agissait d’un titre détenu à vie, et si le connétable de Richemont était en disgrâce en raison de ses partis-pris et de ses actions politiques, il disposait toujours de son titre. En dessous du connétable se trouvaient les maréchaux, et ces fonctions étaient également occupées.

La célèbre épée de Jeanne d’Arc, déjà célèbre de son vivant, n’avait pas appartenu à Charlemagne. Ici, les auteurs du scénario commettent plusieurs erreurs. Tout d’abord, il eut été impossible qu’une épée ayant appartenu à Charlemagne fût ornée d’une fleur de lys. Le principe des armoiries ne vit le jour qu’au XII^e siècle. Ce n’est pas avant cette époque que les rois de France adoptèrent la fleur de lys comme emblème. Ensuite, l’épée fut tout simplement prise à l’église de Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, où Jeanne se rendit en pèlerinage et prière avant d’atteindre Chinon. Plusieurs épées y avaient été laissées en ex-voto et l’une d’entre elle attira certainement l’intérêt de Jeanne, mais il ne faut pas croire que l’épée fut trouvée par miracle.

Enfin, quand Jeanne arriva à Orléans, les Bourguignons n’assiégeaient plus la ville. Suite à une manœuvre diplomatique aussi rusée que risquée, Poton de Xaintrailles, le frère d’armes de La Hire, offrit d’ouvrir les portes de la ville au duc de Bourgogne si ce dernier acceptait d’en assurer la protection. Rien n’aurait fait plus plaisir à Philippe le Bon, mais cette éventualité fâcha le duc de Bedford, régent de France. Les deux hommes n’étaient plus en très bons termes depuis le décès d’Anne de Bourgogne, épouse de Bedford et sœur de Philippe le Bon. Ce dernier décida donc de lever le siège et de laisser les Anglais seuls devant Orléans…

1.1. La carte du jeu

Age of Empires 2 (1999). Joan of Arc’s Campaign. Scenario 2: The Maid of Orléans

Telle qu’est présentée la carte du second scénario de Jeanne d’Arc, on trouve tout d’abord trois villes françaises : Chinon et Blois, au sud de la Loire, contrôlées par l’intelligence artificielle, et Orléans, au nord de la Loire, dont le joueur prend le contrôle dès qu’il y parvient.

Orléans est menacée par quatre forteresses britanniques. Les deux forteresses au nord produisent des fantassins à épée longue, d’autres fantassins à arc longs et des mangonneaux, tandis que les deux forteresses au sud produisent des béliers et des chevaliers.

Enfin, les Bourguignons participent encore au siège, même si cela constitue une erreur historique. Ils menacent notamment Orléans avec leurs piquiers et d’autres types d’unités.

Compte tenu que ces unités viendront assaillir le joueur continuellement, il devra se parer d’unités de plusieurs types pour contrer l’intelligence artificielle de façon efficace. Or, avec une population maximale bloquée à 75 unités, cela pourra s’avérer difficile à accomplir tout en maintenant une économie stable et bien équilibrée…

En outre, le joueur peut rencontrer quelques dangers sur la route, entre Chinon et Blois, notamment, mais surtout à l’entrée du pont de la Loire, où une troupe bourguignonne importante l’attend au pied d’une vilaine tour.

1.2. Orléans encerclée

Plan de la ville et du siège d’Orléans en 1428. Jollois restituit ; Harttweig sculpsit

Comme nous l’avons déjà précisé, les Bourguignons n’étaient plus présents au siège d’Orléans quand Jeanne d’Arc vint au secours de la ville. En revanche, Orléans était encerclée par un véritable chapelet de forteresses et de bastilles occupées par les Anglais. Sur la rive droite, à l’Ouest d’Orléans, les bastilles étaient d’ailleurs gouvernées par Jean Talbot en personne, un chevalier de l’ordre de la Jarretière qui donnait bien du fil à retordre aux Français depuis son arrivée sur le continent. Les Anglais disposaient encore d’une ou l’autre bastille à l’est, mais ils bloquaient principalement le pont de la Loire en occupant la bastille des Tourelles, directement au sud d’Orléans. Pour cette raison, les habitants de la ville avaient saboté le fameux pont et il était en vérité infranchissable, ce qui n’est pas reflété dans le scénario d’Age of Empires 2.

Pour se défendre, Orléans disposait de puissantes murailles, garnies d’une trentaine de tours. Les faubourgs de la ville, de surcroît, avaient été bardés de barricades pour entraver l’accès à la ville aux Anglais. Les églises pouvaient également servir de lieux fortifiés. Toutefois, Orléans se trouvait peu à peu asphyxiée et le besoin de ravitaillement se faisait chaque jour plus urgent.

2.1. Les étapes du scénario

Le second scénario de la campagne de Jeanne d’Arc nous réserve quelques petites surprises, mais il se joue de façon assez linéaire. Le duc d’Alençon rencontre Jeanne dès les premières secondes de la partie et s’avance vers elle, sur son magnifique destrier. « Je suis le duc d’Alençon, Madame. Je serais fier de vous accompagner jusqu’à Orléans. »

De là, Jeanne, Alençon et la petite troupe quitte Chinon, dans le coin inférieur de la carte, pour se rendre à Blois, au Nord-Ouest. Une petite embuscade attend le joueur sur la route, mais quand il parvient à Blois, le joueur obtient un grand nombre de chevaliers et plusieurs charrettes de ravitaillements, qu’il doit escorter jusqu’au Forum d’Orléans, au Nord de la Loire.

Plan de l’ancien Pont d’Orléans et de ses abords avec ses bastilles et boulevards, le fort des Tournelles et la bastille des Augustins. Jollois restituit

En sortant de Blois, le joueur peut suivre le chemin de terre, mais il tombera alors sur une troupe bourguignonne, et passer le pont de la Loire relèvera d’un véritable défi. S’il explore les berges du fleuve, en revanche, le joueur pourra trouver quelques embarcations qui lui permettront de franchir l’eau sans être ennuyé, et de parvenir indemne à Orléans.

Dès que le joueur entre dans Orléans par le Sud (s’il a traversé le pont) ou le Sud-Ouest (s’il a emprunté les embarcations), il prend possession de la ville et sa mission principale devient d’en défendre la cathédrale des assauts britanniques et bourguignons. Afin de gagner la partie, il doit abattre au moins un château anglais, maintenir la cathédrale debout et s’assurer que Jeanne reste en vie.

Cathédrale d’Orléans, vue depuis les toits de la ville.

La méthode la plus facile consiste à passer à l’Âge des Châteaux sitôt que les charrettes de ravitaillement parviennent au Forum d’Orléans. Ensuite, il suffit de repasser la Loire avec quelques villageois et de construire un Atelier de Siège à proximité de la forteresse anglaise la plus au Sud de la carte. Quelques béliers suffisent pour percer une faille dans les remparts et démolir le château qui s’y cache et terminer le scénario endéans les quinze minutes, montre en main. Il n’est pas même nécessaire d’amener les chevaliers trouvé à Blois jusqu’à Orléans, ils peuvent s’engouffrer dans la forteresse anglaise dès qu’une brèche est faite et aider à détruire le château ennemi, qui ne dispose pas de la technologie « meurtrières » pour se défendre.

2.2. La véritable histoire

“Orléans, la Loire et ses îles lors du siège de 1429. Première expédition de Jeanne d’Arc : ravitaillement d’Orléans”

Tout d’abord, le Duc d’Alençon n’a rien à faire dans ce scénario. Il n’intervient que plus tard dans la saga de Jeanne d’Arc, notamment au siège de Paris. Le véritable personnage historique ayant supervisé les opérations militaires du côté français, lors du siège d’Orléans, était Jean Dunois, le bâtard d’Orléans. Il y avait également La Hire, que le joueur d’Age of Empires 2 ne rencontre qu’à la mission suivante.

En résumé, l’armée française dirigée par le maréchal de Boussac, en compagnie La Hire, Jeanne d’Arc et un convoi de ravitaillements, voyagent depuis Blois jusqu’à Orléans. Afin d’atteindre la ville assiégée, ils décident de la contourner par l’est et de traverser la Loire à l’aide de navires de transports. Le bâtard d’Orléans attend le convoi de pied ferme pour superviser la traversée.

Dunois (le bâtard d’Orléans) et saint Jean l’apôtre observant le Jugement Dernier ~ London, BL, Yale Thompson MS 3, f. 32v.

Quand elle rencontre Jean Dunois, Jeanne d’Arc est énervée. Elle demande pourquoi ils ne franchissent pas la Loire à l’Ouest, où les Anglais se sont le plus lourdement fortifiés, là où se trouve leur commandant Jean Talbot. Jean Dunois est épaté par l’audace de la jeune femme. Elle lui rétorque que le conseil de Dieu, qu’elle reçoit, est certainement meilleur que le sien. Jusque-là, le vent empêchait la traversée du fleuve. Quand Jeanne finit de parler, il tourna. Des années plus tard, le bâtard d’Orléans interprétera ce moment comme un « droit miracle ».

Le maréchal de Boussac et l’armée française, toutefois, tournent les talons et retournent à Blois. Jeanne d’Arc, La Hire et les ravitaillements franchissent la Loire. Ils se reposent brièvement avec Jean Dunois à Reuilly, puis font route vers Orléans. Les Anglais en garnison à la bastille de Saint-Loup tentent une sortie pour attaquer le convoi, mais sont distraits par des troupes qui jaillissent en renfort d’Orléans. Jeanne et les ravitaillements arrivent intacts dans la ville, pour le plus grand bonheur des habitants. L’un d’entre eux s’approchent si près de Jeanne pour l’observer qu’il met feu à sa manche avec une torche, mais la catastrophe est écartée.

Loin de diriger les opérations, Jeanne est maintenue dans le noir. Rien ne lui est communiqué, le bâtard d’Orléans et les capitaines fidèles à la cause des Valois discutent de stratégie sans elle. Quand elle se réveille d’une sieste, elle dit avoir rêvé que le sang français était versé. Elle se pare de son armure et galope à tout rompre hors d’Orléans. Elle rejoint en vitesse les troupes françaises qui assaillent la bastille de Saint-Loup, et celle-ci est prise.

La bastille des Augustins tombe ensuite, puis la prochaine bastille attaquée est celle des Tourelles, de l’autre côté du pont de la Loire. Pendant toute la journée, les troupes françaises ne parviennent pas à s’emparer de la place. Néanmoins, grâce aux ultimes encouragements de Jeanne, les Français reprennent courage et conquièrent la bastille. La voie est libre pour l’armée française de venir depuis Blois sans entrave jusqu’à Orléans. Jean Talbot est contraint de plier bagages et il évacue les forteresses campées autour de la ville assiégée.

La libération de la Loire peut enfin commencer.

Outro

Jeanne a prédit qu’elle serait blessée à Orléans. Au point culminant de la bataille, un carreau d’arbalète l’a frappée, la faisant tomber de son cheval. Nous ne pouvions croire à notre malchance.

Mais tandis que nous transportions Jeanne à l’écart du carnage, nous avions remporté la bataille. Orléans était libérée.

Quand nous sommes entrés dans la ville, la population tout entière nous acclamait des fenêtres, sur les toits et dans les rues.

Ils ont tiré des coups de canon dans la nuit et crié à tue-tête le surnom de Jeanne : ‘La Pucelle’ – La Pucelle d’Orléans.

Commentaire

Jeanne d’Arc a bel et bien bien prédit sa blessure. Tandis qu’il est en voyage à Lyon pour son seigneur, le duc de Brabant, le sire de Rotselaar donne des nouvelles de la cour de Charles VII. Sa lettre, datée du 22 avril 1429, mentionne qu’une jeune femme a promis de libérer Orléans, mais qu’elle serait blessée durant les combats. L’attaque de la bastille des Tourelles se joue deux semaines après l’envoi de cette lettre, et durant l’assaut, Jeanne est en effet frappée au matin d’un projectile dans l’épaule. Sa prédiction est relatée par d’autres sources. Les historiens en sont encore étonnés aujourd’hui.

Jeanne, blessée, pleure. Mais elle refuse d’être soignée à l’aide de « sortilèges ». Elle retire elle-même la flèche de son épaule, n’ayant rien d’autre pour soulager sa peine qu’un bout de tissu et de de l’huile d’olive. Elle retourne aussitôt au combat. Au soir, la journée semble perdue, mais elle insiste. « Ne craignez pas, la place est nôtre ! » s’écrie Jeanne quand elle voit son étendard près des murs de la bastille, et indique que c’est là qu’il faut attaquer. Les Français reprennent courage et conquièrent enfin les Tourelles, dans un ultime assaut qui gravera toutes les mémoires.

Le soir se prête aux célébrations, mais il n’y a pas de coups de canons tirés dans la nuit. Le canon était tiré pour marquer le début officiel d’un siège. Les cloches de la ville, en revanche, sonnèrent toutes de concert. Recueillis dans les églises, les habitants d’Orléans et leurs défenseurs chantèrent le Te Deum Laudamus, que Jeanne avait fait chanter à l’armée française au départ de Blois. Ce n’était pas Jeanne, mais Dieu, que l’on remerciait pour la victoire.

Fermez les yeux et imaginez vous à Orléans, au soir de la victoire, par la magie intemporelle de la musique et des chants grégoriens.

 Trois anecdotes truculentes du siège

L’ultime assaut de la bastille des Tourelles donna lieu à de grands moments, qui méritent d’être remémorés.

Le pont de la Loire avait été détruit, mais voyant que le combat s’éternise, les habitants d’Orléans décident de venir en aide à leurs alliés. Ils jettent des planches en bois au travers du pont. Le premier à oser s’avancer sur ces constructions de fortune est un chevalier de l’ordre de l’Hôpital de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, Nicolas de Giresme. Alors qu’il franchit le pont sans que la planche ne cède sous lui, on crie au miracle.

Les capitaines anglais dans la bastille des Tourelles, en revanche, voient le pont levis s’écrouler sous eux et se noient dans la Loire. D’après un marchand italien, cela tient d’un navire de démolition, préparé par Jeanne d’Arc, et avancé sous le pont au moment le plus fatidique.

Enfin, alors que les Anglais évacuent leurs bastilles, un prisonnier de guerre, le bâtard de Bar, parvient à s’échapper de la façon la plus originale du monde. Il se fait porter par le prêtre-confesseur de Jean Talbot en personne jusqu’à Orléans ! Non seulement vient-il renforcer ses amis, mais il leur apporte un informateur de rêve.

Les historiens débattent encore aujourd’hui pour déterminer l’impact réel de Jeanne sur le commandement de l’armée française. S’il est désormais exclu qu’elle ait dirigé elle-même les troupes, les plus audacieux prétendent qu’elle a laissé derrière elle un « héritage ». Elle allait au-devant du danger et ne reculait devant rien. En cela, toutefois, elle était une parfaite élève de La Hire, la sagesse et l’expérience en moins. Pourtant, sans elle, il est indéniable que les Tourelles n’auraient pas été conquises et que le siège d’Orléans aurait pu s’enliser davantage.

Les Anglais étaient en mauvaise posture. Leur alliance avec les Bourguignons fondait comme neige au soleil et le comte de Salisbury, leur génie militaire, était mort aux premières heures du siège d’Orléans. La ville, en revanche, était défendue par les capitaines d’armées les plus retords et les plus braves de l’armée française. La Hire, Poton de Xaintrailles, leurs frères et leurs amis, ils étaient tous là. Ils n’avaient aucun titre pompeux, mais ils étaient de véritables professionnels de la guerre.

Jeanne d’Arc ne jeta jamais que de l’huile sur le feu, alors que les braises étaient encore chaudes et que le vent avait déjà commencé à tourner. Cela ne retire néanmoins rien à son courage, à sa vaillance et à son charme, consacrés à jamais par l’histoire.

4 Reasons as to Why Alexander the Great is Depicted like a 15th Century Knight in Medieval Manuscripts

Alexander unhorsing Porrus (London, British Library, Royal MS 20 B XX, f. 53r)

I enjoy browsing digitized manuscripts so much that I lose my sleep over it. A few days ago I started a best off of Alexander the Great’s illumination in medieval manuscripts. That when I observed for myself that he is depicted as a 14^th-15^th century knight in full armour in most of pre-Renaissance manuscripts and we even find him depicted jousting against his enemy, King Porus!

Alexander the Great jousting and unhorsing King Porus. ~ London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E VI, 16r.

Contemporary scholars like André Petit or Frédéric Duval have thought hard and long about those medieval so-called anachronisms. They came up with such complex theories about the concepts and representations of time that I couldn’t properly translate them in here. Not to say that I didn’t understand what they wrote under the obvious influence of crack… But they certainly had a long hard puff of the good shit.

From my readings I can give you four reasons as to why Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE), Julius Cesar (d. 44 BCE) and King Arthur (supposed to have lived during the 5^th and 6^th centuries) were depicted as full-on 15^th century knights by 15^th century illuminators.

Fateful moment when Julius Cesar crossed the Rubicon. ~ Paris, BnF, MS fr. 5088, f. 192v.

#1. Another perception of the passing of time

The people living at the end of the Middle Ages sensed no rupture between the Classical Era and their own times. They didn’t know about our very 19^th century fashion of cutting History into three to four main periods. They hadn’t all heard nor agreed to Petrarch’s claim that following the fall of Rome—that he himself dated back to 96 AD, by the way, and not 476 AD—Europe had sunk into some Dark Age… What really differentiated the Renaissance humanists with their intellectual predecessors, who also knew their Classical texts by heart, was that very feeling of rupture, that urge to find again what had been lost for they entertained that proto-romantic idea of loss. Medieval scholars and humanists—for the Middle Ages had its own humanists indeed—had a different relationship with Antiquity. They lived by the metaphor of dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants: they were not as great as their Roman founding fathers, but thanks to them, they could see farther than mankind ever could before.

Washington D.C., Library of Congress, Rosenwald MS 4, f. 5r

#2. Linguistic issues

Medieval scholars knew pretty well that the world was in a different state during Alexander’s times. When reading their books in Latin they were very conscious that some of the words that they were encountering used to describe realities that no longer existed. That was the whole meaning of their numerous glosses. Historical, judicial and literary Latin texts were sometimes heavily annotated. Young university students learning Latin were not only studying a new language, they were also discovering a different world. They could even, I bet, differentiate the various meanings that one single Latin word could cover if written in a classical text or in a medieval texts. That was not a problem. However, to translate Latin texts into vernacular languages came out as quite a challenge from the 13^th to the 15^th century for French, English or German were “poor” languages when compared to Latin. They didn’t beneficiated yet from a fixed grammar or an extensive scholarly vocabulary. That’s why the pontifex becomes the bishop, the praetor becomes a provost and the miles (originally the foot-soldier!) becomes the knight. Medieval scholars could still tell the difference of course, but this constructed a representation of Antiquity that was “very close from home” for non-erudite medieval readers.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses and its glosses ~ Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. MS 1598, f. 2r.

#3. Capitalizing on a sense of legacy

When noble men read the stories of Alexander and Arthur, they certainly wished to picture themselves along those mighty heroes, fighting side by side with them on their way to immortal glory. As a matter of fact, aristocrats would very often play the part and dress up as Arthurian knights for jousting events or knightly tournaments. They were dressing up alright, but they were fighting for real. Back in the 13^th century, when Wace translated into Anglo-Norman Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, he did it with a purpose: to prove that Henry II Plantagenet was the rightful ruler of England as per a translatio imperii, a “shift of power” from East to West which made England the natural heir of both Troy and Rome through the figures of Brutus (the Trojan legendary founder of Britain) and King Arthur. If such characters were to be depicted the same way late medieval Kings of England were, then it would be much easier for the latter to claim their legacy. So that’s what happened. Alexander, David, Caesar, Arthur and Charlemagne were all depicted in a way that made them somehow familiar. It would even further the idea that knighthood was a concept impervious from the passing of time: good Kings and noble knights had always existed. It was up to the new generation to carry on their long-lasting and exemplary tradition.

By the end of the 15th century, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were all given imaginary coats of arms. There was yet no such thing as a coat of arms during the 5-6th centuries. Though they were reenacting the Arthurian tales they loved so much, 15th century knights were mostly carving their favourite knights according to their own customs and fashion. ~ Paris, Arsenal, MS 4976, f. 3r.

#4. History as a set of examples

Eventually, who do we see when we look at Alexander or Arthur in medieval manuscripts? Is it really Alexander? Or Arthur?—Does it even matter? What we actually see is the concept they symbolise: a most perfect King. It is very important to remember that History had a very clear purpose in the Late Middle Ages. It served as a set of good and bad moral examples. The real truth behind every story were not the facts they told, but the message they carried. Our very world was considered to be only the mirror of another and higher reality known as God’s own realm. The Matrix was the shit. Charles IV of the Holy Roman Empire believed that himself as we can read in his autobiography. He starts by reminding that we have two faces or two shapes. One, anchored in this very world, means nothing in itself. However, as it fulfils God’s will then it can serve a purpose and escape the void that is the matter. Medieval scholars went as far as to give theological meaning to Alexander or Caesar’s adventures. Such was the real purpose of their story. Factual accuracy had nothing to do with it.

At the ripe age of 12 years old, Alexander the Great was taught no less than the science of astronomy! Much impressive indeed. ~ London, British Library, Royal MS 20 B XX, f. 6v.

When the Portuguese humanist Vasco de Lucena decided to translate Alexander the Great’s biography for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at the very end of the 15^th century, he frowned upon the many tales that surrounded the Macedonian monarch. He bluntly rejected the romances as any kind valid historical source. Alexander was no more to be equal to Lancelot or Tristan. He had to be more. He had to be real, historically accurate. Vasco de Lucena returned to the source that he deemed the most reliable, the biography of Quintus Curtius. He followed a “scientific method” establishing Alexander’s reign period thanks to the Bible and cross-referencing other classical sources. It was the beginning of a new era but it would yet take some time for the classical aesthetic models to impose themselves and cast away the charming gothic depictions of antique heroes, as the Burgundian manuscripts holding Vasco’s translation show.

In this copy of Vasco de Lucena’s translation of Quintus Curtius, Alexander still carries his sentences in a very medieval fashion ~ Paris, BnF, MS fr. 257, f. 192r.

Further readings

• A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages. Edited by Z. David Zuwiyya. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2011.
• Frédéric Duval, “Comment interpreter les anachronismes ? Le cas de l’histoire romaine écrite en français au début du xiii^e siècle”, in Anabases (2008), 8; online edition.
• George Cary, “Alexander the Great in Medieval Theology”, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1954), 17, 1/2, p. 98-114.
• Mark Cruse, Illuminating the Roman d’Alexandre. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011 (Gallica, 22).
• Theodore E. Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages’”, in Speculum (1942), 17, 2, p. 226-242.
• Véronique Zara, “The Historical Figure of Arthur in Wace’s ‘Roman de Brut’”, in Arthuriana (2008), 18, 2, p. 17-30.