Banners in the Mud: War, Chivalry, and Myth in the Hundred Years’ War
Meeting Time: Tuesdays, 6:00PM to 8:00PM CST and Saturdays 10:00AM to 12:00PM CST
Instructors: Jesse Mccarthy, PhD
What was it actually like to fight a medieval war? How did commanders decide where to march, when to fight, and whether a battle was worth the risk? And how much of what we think we know about knights, castles, armor, and medieval combat survives contact with the evidence? In this online immersion, you will investigate medieval warfare from the perspective of the people who fought, commanded, observed, and wrote about it. Working with essential primary sources—including medieval chronicles, military ordinances, campaign letters, eyewitness accounts, and later writers on warfare such as Machiavelli—you will learn to reconstruct battles and campaigns from incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence. Rather than simply reading what a chronicler says happened, we will ask what the terrain, weapons, armor, logistics, and tactical situation suggest was actually possible. Digital battlefield reconstructions will put those questions to the test. Using historical maps, Google Earth, and other digital tools, we will examine famous battles and campaigns from the ground up: identifying routes of approach, terrain, defensive positions, lines of sight, and the problems commanders faced. Students will compare these reconstructions with the surviving primary accounts, asking where the sources agree, where they conflict, and why medieval writers sometimes transformed confusing and brutal encounters into orderly stories of courage, betrayal, providence, and chivalric glory. We will also get beyond the familiar image of the knight in shining armor by investigating the weapons and equipment that actually shaped medieval combat. What could a longbow, crossbow, lance, or polearm really do? How protective was armor? How did infantry confront cavalry? Why did some armies win despite apparently overwhelming disadvantages? Through demonstrations, artifact evidence, experimental archaeology, and tactical exercises, we will separate what medieval weapons and armor could actually do from centuries of mythology about them. Along the way, we will encounter commanders, soldiers, chroniclers, and military thinkers from across the medieval world and examine how warfare changed over time. By the end of the immersion, you will know how historians turn fragmentary sources, landscapes, artifacts, and modern digital tools into reconstructions of medieval battles—and why figuring out what really happened is often much harder, and much more interesting, than the legend.
Dr. Jesse McCarthy holds a Ph.D. in History and works at the intersection of culture, politics, and the imagination. A former Vanderbilt University lecturer and postdoctoral fellow, he is now a member of the Upper School history faculty at Harpeth Hall and teaches with Vanderbilt Programs for Talented Youth, including advanced Research Immersion courses. Beyond the classroom, Dr. McCarthy is an active public humanities speaker who has led widely attended seminars at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre. His teaching and research explore human culture and expression at the crux of myth and history: how we continually reimagine the past to understand ourselves and the worlds we inherit.
