SOURCE: Kay, Sarah. “Allies and Enemies.” In The “Chansons de geste” in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions, pp. 175-99. Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1995.

[In the following excerpt, Kay compares Garin le Loherain with Aye d'Avignon in order to highlight its theme of treachery spawned from an internally confused social order.]

GARIN LE LOHEREN

Garin is an altogether more pessimistic narrative [than Aye d'Avignon]. Although as in Aye traitors ally themselves with pagan interest, there is no compensating move on the pagan side to restore order for the non-treacherous Franks. Frankish society is not depicted as any less disorderly or confused than in Aye: on the contrary. But its conflicts are not resolvable by outside intervention. Instead, the size of the traitor force is increased to the point where it dominates not only the royal court, but also the whole realm. Loheren and Bordelais are left to battle it out over 16,000 lines of text with no prospect other than that successive generations, in later poems of the cycle, will have to do the same.

Garin shares with Aye a problematic companionship, since the young Garin is initially conpains (1045) of Fromont, son of the traitor Hardré, and the most prominent member of the younger generation of the treacherous Bordelais clan. Fromont tends to waver between honourable behaviour towards the Loherens, and adherence to the unscrupulous ways of the more hardline Bordelais, so that even his treachery is not to be relied on.¹ Also as in Aye, feudal ties in Garin are exposed to impossible strains. The Emperor Pepin, who at the start of his reign is a sickly and irresolute youth respected by no one, commits a series of injustices against his vassals, from failing to protect Garin's father against invasion by Saracens, through depriving Garin of his fiancée in order to marry her himself, to eventually siding with the traitors against the Loheren clan. Increasingly the Loherens improvise solutions more pragmatic than licit, as when Begon razes Bernart de Naisil's castle which the king had promised to leave intact, or when Garin kills Guillelme de Blanchefort whilst under royal safe-conduct.

Family ties are not overlaid as they are in Aye by ‘family romance’ substitutions, but they contribute to conflict in other ways. Fromont's wavering sometimes places him at odds with his family, whilst Begon's rashness invites rebuke from his. The Loherens are related to King Anseïs of Cologne, whose daughter Aeliz was the mother of Garin and Begon, and so they look to family support from Germany when relations with Pepin deteriorate. Although located in the text's prehistory, an illegitimate birth is the direct cause of a further, striking case of social confusion. One of Garin's sisters is married to Hervi:

                                                            … s'ert povres bacheler.
Vilain l'apellent que de bast estoit né,
mais tant [est] preuz, nus n'i sot que blasmer.

(423-5)

… and he was a poor young knight. They called him ‘peasant’ because he was illegitimate, but he is so worthy that no one could find anything to criticize in him.

Hervi's bastardy² makes him evade conventional social classification. Although low-born he is married to a Loheren sister; his son Rigaut, despite his peasant ways, is knighted by Begon, who is his uncle. Subsequently, Begon himself is mistaken for a low-born poacher while on a boar hunt, and murdered by a peasant's arrow. Class distinctions, then, become skewed in this poem in a way that can be traced back to a breakdown of the family.

A final, disastrous result of family negotiations in this poem is the apportionment of territory arising from marriage settlements. Initially the Loherens are based in Metz and the Bordelais at Lens (in the Pas-de-Calais).³ The traitors might seem, then, to be at a safe distance from their enemies, although their progenitor, Hardré, is in fact at the royal court at the start of the poem. The traitors' link with the north-west is strengthened when Fromont marries the daughter of the count of Flanders. However, Garin and Begon have many sisters, through whose marriages they acquire relatives with lands extending north-west into Picardy (Cambrai) and south-west (Anjou, Orleans). To the south of this again, the Bordelais, as their name implies, have further strongholds: they hold the city of Bordeaux, and Guillelme de Blanchefort's lands are in Gascony. Early in the text, Pepin foolishly makes Begon duke of Gascony (1057), thus granting him territory right in the Bordelais heartland. Subsequently Begon and Garin marry the two daughters of Milon of Blaye, agreeing that Begon should cede to Garin his share of their father's lands in exchange for gaining control of Garin's wife's inheritance (i.e. Blaye). By this means, Garin and Begon each consolidate their holdings, giving Begon an even greater presence among the southern Bordelais, by whom he is eventually killed. Meanwhile, others of the Bordelais (Bernart de Naisil, Guillelme de Monclin) hold territories in the Meuse, just to the south of Metz, which makes them well placed to launch attacks on the northern-based Loherens; and to the south of them again, another of the Loherens, Aubri, is based in Burgundy. In sum, the whole of France is parcelled out piecemeal between members of the rival families, so that wherever a Loheren may be, he will have a Bordelais neighbour, and vice versa.⁴ The threat of ‘treachery’, then, is not, as in Aye, solely located at court: as a result of a combination of inheritance, royal concession, and marriage settlements, it is generalized throughout France.

As in Aye, the main objects of struggle in Garin are wives and territory, usually the two in conjunction. Given the increase in the numbers of dramatis personae, their territorial dispersal, and the sheer length of the poem, revenge also forms an important source of strife. These goals are pursued, again as in Aye, in such a way that the traitors form the focus of the text's reprobation of social disorder.

The poem begins like other traitor plots with focus on an evil counsellor, Hardré, who exercises his evil influence at the court of the Emperor Pepin. Twice he advises the king not to assist his vassals whose lands are being attacked by Saracens. In the first case, the vassal in question is Hervi de Metz, father of Garin and Begon, and Hervi turns for help instead to Germany. In the second, the vassal under threat is Tierri de Morïane; and Hardré's counsel is overturned on protest from the younger knights, led by Garin, and including Hardré's son Fromont, at this stage still Garin's companion. However, when Garin takes an army to Tierri's defence, Bernart de Naisil (Hardré's brother) induces the Bordelais not to fight. Garin announces that if Fromont leaves his force, he will have no part in any winnings. Fromont, seeing the Saracens flee Garin's attack, changes his mind and engages battle with them. He is then indignant that he receives none of the booty, and even more angry that Tierri de Morïane promises his lands and his daughter Blanchefleur (his only child) to Garin. This episode shows the traitors to be cowardly, spurred to action only by material benefit, jealous of others' success, and ultimately complicitous in Saracen interests.⁵

Fromont's anger at Garin's projected marriage to Blanchefleur powers the complex machinations that lead eventually to Pepin's marrying her himself. Initially Fromont claims Blanchefleur as his, since Pepin, following the concession of Gascony to Begon, had promised him the next vacant fief. When it is pointed out that the fief of Morïane is not ‘vacant’ but has been bestowed in due form, Fromont provokes the first of several fights in the royal palace, in the course of which Hardré is killed. Pepin takes the Loheren side against the Bordelais, and ‘treachery’ assumes henceforth the role it will have for the rest of the poem: that of responsibility for civil war.

It does not on that account leave off court intrigue. Fromont's cousin, Archbishop Henri, unites bad counsel with perjury when he urges Pepin to forbid Garin's marriage on the grounds of consanguinity, and take Blanchefleur for himself, since in no other way will he secure peace with the Bordelais. Although not himself lecherous, Henri manipulates the king's lust and induces him to act dishonourably for reasons of political expediency. Since Henri's intervention has been purchased by Fromont, bribery is also involved. Fromont then proposes to Garin that he should help kidnap Blanchefleur for Fromont's kinsman, Guillelme de Monclin; in exchange, Garin and Begon will marry Fromont's two sisters (5919 ff.). Blanchefleur, however, indignantly refuses marriage to any of the traitor lineage. She will later persuade the king to forestall the projected wedding between the Loheren brothers and the Bordelais sisters, and indeed she continues to defend Garin as ‘loiaus’ [law-abiding] in contrast to the ‘fel, larron et foimenti’ [criminal, thievish and perjuring] Bordelais (14249-52). Like Aye, or Aiglentine in Aye's sequel Gui de Nanteuil, her perception of the traitors' turpitude is unwavering and unparalleled by that of any male character in the poem.

The traitors' next move is another familiar one: to frame Garin as being himself a traitor. Bernart de Naisil alleges to Pepin that Garin tried to kill him. The upshot is the judicial duel where Isoré is killed by Begon. The traitors have now infiltrated not just the court, but its judicial machinery.

The traitors, their plans in disarray, are now beginning to turn on one another: Bernart de Naisil throws Guillelme de Monclin in prison (6843 ff.). It is shortly after this point that the Loheren party likewise begins to fragment. Begon breaks the king's promise to spare Naisil (6994 ff.), provokes his relatives' disapproval for guaranteeing that the newly knighted ‘peasant’ Rigaut shall have Fromont's horse (8833-45), is accused of being diabolical by Pepin (9402), and himself dies a peasant's death. He receives a eulogy from none other than Fromont (10737-42, 10764); Fromont's anger at Begon's death creates a further rift within the Bordelais clan. The distinction between ‘heroes’ and ‘traitors’ is becoming increasingly blurred. The ennobled ‘peasant’ Rigaut is now conducting the most effective action against the Bordelais; and the text's imagery, working down a notional hierarchy from knights, through peasants, reaches the animal kingdom: Begon, struck down beside the slain boar, is seen not only as non-noble, but as having literally lost his way in the wilderness.⁶ After an unsuccessful siege of Bordeaux horses are left a prey to mastiffs (13860); corpses on the battlefield following Garin's attack on Guillelme de Blanchefort (supposedly under Pepin's safe-conduct) are devoured by wolves and more mastiffs (14171); and Pepin, furious at this defiance of his authority and declaring his support for the Bordelais, is told by Blanchefleur that he has a mastiff's heart (14239). Decidedly the country is going to the dogs.

By the end of the poem, Pepin has been drawn into the Bordelais camp, and Garin, at a loss for money, mortgages his fief to the king of Cologne. Impoverished and isolated, he follows his brother to a violent and unknightly death, struck down in a church by a traitor force. A supporter, spotting his potential as a saint, cuts off his right arm before he is fully dead for use as a future relic. The black humour of this scene underlines the way the heroes' strength (their ‘right arm’) is as much undermined by the problems and conflicts on their own side as by the attacks on them from others. The only option open to the characters of the sequel is to battle on.

As in Aye d'Avignon, the women in this poem are the best judges of the ethical and political crises that surround them. The male characters live in a turbid and turbulent universe; God may, indeed, reward them with sanctity in the life to come, but does nothing to ensure order or justice in this one. The poem, then, exhibits in a depressing form the problems … arising from an internally confused social order. Chaos and slaughter ensue from the initial act of the court traitor advising his king that it is better to let the Saracens attack his vassals than to impoverish himself in their defence. Such ‘bewitching’ of the royal ear leads to a world where a coherent sense of order and value is lacking to all those who possess effective control over events.⁷

.....

This [essay] has argued that the notions of ‘ally’ and ‘enemy’ are bound up with the concepts of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Increasingly, the chansons de geste locate the enemy on the ‘inside’, while the heroes' supporters are enlisted from ‘outside’ the conventional cast of epic characters. This disposition is the reverse of that found in romances, where the ‘enemy’, as in the earliest chansons de geste, remains predominantly an ‘outsider’.

I have argued [elsewhere] that the epic enemy-as-traitor is overdetermined by a range of literary, historical, and ideological factors, and subsumes elements of political and moral critique. His turpitude is symptomatic of both generic, and social, unease. Traitors embody a negative image of ‘courtliness’ and prey on social instability; by identifying them as ‘evil’, the chansons de geste pursue a dialogue both with the genre of courtly romance, and with historical circumstance. The traitor points up, and absorbs into himself, the internal contradictions of epic ‘society’. He stages a negative representation of companionship, family alliance, and vassaldom, so as to explain the failure of these relations in the experience of others. He embodies the faults of corruption, lechery, deceit, and ambition, and so takes the blame for the vicissitudes of the hero in his attempts to obtain or retain women, land, and status.

Traitors are also, of course, the chief architects of the oppression which gives rise to counternarrative. The king, weak in the face of their seductions, is manipulated into despotic behaviour which then casts other characters as victims. The traitor thus again signals a contradiction (the king is both tyrant and puppet) whilst polarizing the powerful and the disempowered. In this respect, the concept of the ‘enemy’ rejoins that of ‘ally’: although in narrative terms the two are opposed, ideologically they are united, since they stage, respectively, negative and positive images of a society in crisis; both allies and enemies are instruments of political and moral critique. In Aye and Garin, however, treachery unsettles the heroic as well as affirming it. In Aye, it is a source of confusion and contradiction which infiltrates the whole world of the poem, so that the old ‘enemy’ (the Saracen) is the only ‘ally’ left. In Garin, even this recourse is blocked off, and everyone seems to be to some extent an ‘enemy’.

‘Allies’ and ‘enemies’, then, are symptoms of the political unconscious of the chansons de geste, as these poems negotiate the inadmissible but inescapable incoherence of society, and the unacceptable fantasy solutions proposed by romance.

Notes

1. In some MSS, Fromont is reproached by Garin for failing to live up to the standards of treachery set by his forebears: see Anne Iker Gittleman, Le Style épique dans Garin le Loherain, 151.

2. This account of Hervi's birth is not in all the MSS: see ibid. 167-8.

3. Why Lens, when they are known throughout as Bordelais, and have holdings in Bordeaux? The text is rather confused on this point. See ibid. 28.

4. See my ‘Topography and the Relative Realism of Battle Scenes in Chansons de geste’, 270-6.

5. The poem later predicts that Fromont's son Fromondin will deny God and ally himself with Saracens (7187-8), a prediction realized in its sequel Gerbert de Mez.

6. There are parallels here with Daurel et Beton and Boeve de Haumtone, in each of which a killing on a boar hunt reflects the bestial character of the killer: see Chs. 5 and 7, pp. 155-7, 220, 227.

7. In the sequel to Garin, Gerbert de Mez, it becomes impossible effectively to punish the traitors, seen as noblemen with the same status as the heroes: see Rossi, ‘La Réprobation sociale’.

Bibliography

This Bibliography is divided into [two] sections: (1) Chansons de geste, [(2)] critical, historical, and theoretical works. The following abbreviations are used:

APF Anciens Poètes de la France

CCM Cahiers de civilisation médiévale

CFMA Classiques français du Moyen Âge

FMLS Forum for Modern Language Studies

NRCF Nouveau Recueil complet des fabliaux, ed. Willem Noomen and Nico van de Boogaard (Assen, 1983-)

PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

SATF Société des anciens textes français

SE The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. under the general editorship of James Strachey (London, 1966-74)

TLF Textes littéraires français

ZrP Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie

Chansons de Geste

Aye d'Avignon, ed. S. J. Borg, TLF (Geneva, 1967).

Garin le Loheren, ed. Josephine E. Vallerie (Ann Arbor, 1947).

Gerbert de Mez, ed. Pauline Taylor, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de philosophie et lettres de Namur 11 (Namur, 1953).

Critical, Historical, and Theoretical Works

Kay, Sarah, ‘Topography and the Relative Realism of Battle Scenes in Chansons de geste’, Olifant, 4 (1977), 259-78.

Rossi, Marguerite, ‘La Réprobation sociale est-elle un critère d'exclusion? Les Traîtres dans Gerbert de Mez’, in Exclus et systèmes d'exclusion, 27-40.