60 MARCH/APRIL 2022
Christine de Pisan, who was outspoken about
the rights of women.
The perilous life of a knight often entailed
suffering, and Boucicaut did endure two major
defeats. First, he was among the band of Chris-
tian knights routed by the Ottoman Turks at
Nicopolis in 1396. His second and definitive
defeat came at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.
The English captured Boucicaut and took him
to England, where he died in 1421.
The End of Chivalry
The English longbows and trained archers com-
bined to bring victory at Agincourt, along with
the tactics of sneak-attack cavalry charges and
defensive maneuvers of massed, unknighted
foot soldiers. Longbows and new tactics led to
killing an enemy at a distance. Black powder fire-
arms—long-barreled arquebuses, muskets, and
pistols—came on the scene in the late 1400s,
further changing combat. Knights had fought
face-to-face with their foes for so long and con-
sidered doing so a mark of honor, but these
changes made their suits of armor and methods
of combat seem outdated.
Systemic changes also hastened the decline of
knights. Monarchs grew stronger and were able
to develop more modern institutions to collect
taxes, create courts of law, and fund standing
armies. Distance grew between the church and
the state as both competed for power and influ-
ence across western Europe.
The knightly world created by feudalism, with
its articulated values of nobility, an ingrained
social and religious order, and a courtly code of
conduct, was shaken to its foundation by these
developments. The new world order, centered
on a powerful monarchy and its administrators,
radically altered their support system, livelihood,
beliefs, and the very society that had created
them. The age of chivalry was over, but the lives
and legends of these medieval men would endure
for centuries.
BOUCICAUT’S
FINAL
DEFEAT
‘UPON ST. CRISPIN’S DAY’MEDIEVALIST ALBERTO RECHE IS A MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE FOR
MEDIEVAL STUDIES AT THE AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA, SPAIN.The Knight in History
Frances Gies, Harper Perennial, 2011.
Learn more