Page 56 - HISTORY ANGKOR

During the late 1100s, tournaments were SEEKING THE PRIZE
enjoying their heyday, and Marshal excelled WINNER
at the jousts. For more than a decade, he was
said to have unhorsed and captured more than

500 combatants as he went from tournament TAKES
to tournament. Defeated knights would have
to pay a ransom. Together with the spoils from IT ALL
seizing harnesses and saddles, Marshal could
enjoy a highly valued chivalric practice: largesse.
Generosity in distributing the bounty from his illiam Marshal’s knightly career is one of the few
wins allowed him to forge valuable loyalties. that was meticulously documented, albeit in a
As well as excelling on the tournament field, somewhat embellished form. The verse biography L’histoire
Marshal acted as master of arms and confidant de Guillaume le Maréchal was commissioned by Marshal’s

to Prince Henry, son of Henry II of England and son and heir, and relates Marshal’s adventurous life. It is a
heir to the throne. The young prince died before fantastic resource for colorful details about the tournaments
he could wear the crown, and William fulfilled knights competed in. Competitions in the 1100s often featured
the promise he had made to him to travel to the giant melee battles, in which teams of knights would square
Holy Land, where he fought for two years off against each other. At
alongside the Templars. When Marshal the end of a particularly

returned, the king offered him the hand boisterous battle,
of Isabel de Clare, Countess of Pem- Marshal’s helmet
broke, one of the wealthiest heiresses in was so battered and
misshapen that he
the kingdom. The union raised Marshal to
had to employ the
the highest ranks of the nobility. His days
services of a blacksmith
as a knight-errant were over.
to pry him out of it.
Marshal would continue to shine on the
Marshal enjoyed such
battlefields. When Richard the Lionheart
great success on the
was away on the Third Crusade, William
tournament circuit
protected his throne against the maneu-
that in 1179 he even
vering of John Lackland, the king’s brother
formed his own battle
and regent. After Richard’s death, when the
company. Marshal
same John’s right to the throne was in dis- employed a patient
pute, Marshal was one of the few great no- strategy for his team,
bles to remain on John’s side during the First holding back while
Barons’ War, in which the nobility rebelled allowing other teams to

and forced King John to issue the charter of fight each other at full
rights known as Magna Carta. strength until they were
This uncompromising loyalty to the crown exhausted. Then, his
sealed William Marshal’s reputation as the team could strike and
greatest knight of his time. He died shortly easily win the day—and
after his last great military victory, the Battle all the costly spoils that
of Lincoln, in 1217, where he succeeded in driv- fell to them as victors.
ing the French army out of England, and forc-

ing the French king to give up his claim to the
English throne. ETERNAL REST
A recumbent statue
Ulrich von Liechtenstein has been possibly
While some knights became immortalized identified as William
Marshal, in London’s
through the poems of heroic deeds writ-
Temple Church, where
ten about them, others crafted those poems he was buried in 1219.

themselves. A rich tradition of literature and ALAMY/ACI

54 MARCH/APRIL 2022