Nina Taunton (Brunel University, Twickenham)
In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault uses as his prototype the model of the military camp (that 'short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at will'2) to describe the inauguration of 'observatories' as a distinct form of knowledge that came into being in the classical age. Yet he does not distinguish between salient features of the military camp of the very early sixteen hundreds from those of the military camps in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds as examples of rupture or the onset of a new type of series or system of relations in his own historical analysis. He uses the example of Walhousen, a military writer of the early 1600s (who rightfully belongs to his Renaissance episteme) to illustrate the workings of corrective discipline and mechanisms of control characteristic of the later Enlightenment episteme,3 which is precisely distinguished from its predecessor by virtue of its setting up a network of observation points and strategies whose function was to transform received knowledge attained through observation into control by exposure.4 This paper challenges Foucault's assumption that full-blown panopticism was a feature only of the age of Enlightenment by showing that it was already operating at major institutional levels in the literature on war in the 1590s - a full century earlier than Foucault would have it. I have started with Foucault because his characterisation of an eighteenth-century camp fits very well one of the 1590s despite his claims to the contrary. A major objective of this essay is to show what the manual literature of the 1590s on encampment can tell us about the function of surveillance in another genre of literary production - a play - Shakespeare's Henry V, particularly in relation to the much-disputed camp scenes. I take a closer look than military historians are wont to do at details of the general's tent and of the watch in the manuals and reinflect them as strategies of surveillance. I end with a reading of Henry V that indicates the play's participation in these discursive practices, thereby extending the work of those critics who regard the play as a dramatisation of the ideological instability surrounding Elizabethan rule in the 1590s.
Among Henry Percy the Ninth Earl of Northumberland's papers at Petworth House and Alnwick Castle are extensive writings on many aspects of the art and science of war and his library shelves are well stocked with all the major Italian, French and Spanish contemporary writings on the subject as well as important ancient classical military texts.5 The following three treatises from his library were all published in the 1590s and all expound the ways in which the military camp needs to be fortified, the details of the watch, the placement and function of the high command and the role of the sentinel:
Taken alongside Northumberland's own manuscript writings on the subject, these writings come together as epistemologies - that is, as ways of achieving and understanding a form of specialised knowledge. In effect they converge to form a discourse of what Foucault calls 'new forms of knowledge' of man, constituted through the operations of bodily regimes and strategies of surveillance. I want to examine the relationship of this particular kind of knowledge to the figure and positioning of the general, and the mapping of knowledge-routes and watch-points throughout the camp. The emphasis is on war as discourse, serving multiple functions through a variety of texts and with symbolic as well as literal significance for the last troubled years of Elizabeth I's reign. My main argument is that these generically diverse writings show a preoccupation with practices of secrecy and defence that may be related to border anxieties in the continuing struggle to keep Spanish troops from encroaching upon English interests in France and the Netherlands. I also suggest that underlying the detailed and manifold discursive constructions of the military camp as a secure power base there lurks the spectre of powerlessness that was terrifying to those writers of the 1590s who made war their subject.
1. The1590s Context.
What conditioned the production, dissemination and perusal of these writings, and what was their signifying function in what one historian has called the 1590s 'invasion psychosis'?6 In the first place, they emerged out of a particular set of circumstances surrounding Elizabeth I's war policy during the last years of her reign. The outcome of inconclusive confrontations at sea and battles fought on continental soil was recovery and increase in maritime strength for the Spanish and in England an intensification of fear of enemy invasion. Immediacy was given to issues of defence by the occupation of Brittany and Picardy by Spanish forces in the 1590s.7 This event made clear to the government and people of England that invasion was more than a possibility, and localised raids along the coast,8 such as the Spanish landing in Cawsand Bay and two in West Wales,9 demonstrate that fear of Spanish incursion was more than paranoia. The manuals reflect this fear precisely in their provision of copious defence and containment strategies for castrametation. As Lindsay Boynton sums up, the chief outcome of such incursions was 'renewed determination to strengthen the defences. Surveys were made, inter-county aid looked at anew, and the building of fortifications was intensified'.10
The queen's dealings in France also occasioned anxieties about money, men and defence that are reflected in the manuals and Northumberland's manuscripts on war. In an effort to advance Henry of Navarre's Protestant claims against the Catholic League, Elizabeth sent Norris, Williams and Essex11 to forestall Philip II's project for securing a base for the invasion of England by offering his help to the League as protector of the crown of France. Although Elizabeth made Henry of Navarre responsible for all her expenditure, the venture was nevertheless costly in resources.12 Norris was instructed to guard the coast from Brest to St. Malo and Essex had to wait at Dieppe until Navarre took Rouen.13 The resulting strain on both sets of troops from excessive marching in Brittany in the one instance and long-term encamping in one place, disease and desertion in the other14 gives point to manual and manuscript prescription on location, durability and construction of camps and the setting up of internal as well as external policing of their defences. In addition, Essex's identity as a charismatic (though uncontrollable) military leader emerges at a moment when fears for England's safety from invasion were running high. And the significance of Northumberland's role in this context becomes clear when we consider more closely his involvement in military matters throughout the 1590s and his participation in campaigns in the Low Countries in the last three years of Elizabeth's reign. His status as a military commander and a professional soldier has very recently come under reappraisal by Stephen Clucas who reconsiders the assumption that an aristocrat only ever aspired to amateurish dabbling in warfare, reserving his proper business for matters of policy and state.15
2. The general's tent: an epistemology of command
Anxieties about lines of defence in the construction of the military camp is reflected in Northumberland's writing and reading matter published in the 1590s. Obsession with location and fortification of the camp is expressed in language that strikingly accentuates ocularity. A whole culture of watchfulness is manifest in the way in which the site for setting up camp is endlessly debated. Control of the visible as an attempted defence against the worry of losing ascendancy over one's own troops as much as over the enemy is given urgency by the appearance in print of these writings in the midst of Essex's costly and debilitating campaigns in France (where he dissipated his soldiers' energies and the funds given him by Elizabeth); in Ireland (where his military resources against Tyrone were enervated by his diversion of troops to fortify insignificant strongholds in Leinster and Munster) and the failure to establish control at sea in the expedition to Cadiz in 1596 and the 'Islands' voyage of 1597.16 Above all Northumberland's numerous tables and diagrams record an organisation and a minute itemisation of the function and operations of the watch extending, summarising and in some instances copying from the writers he had by him. All of these writers provide painstakingly detailed and rigidly defined chains of command through which news entering the camp must pass. Fears of losing control of one's men and exposing incipient weaknesses in the quarters and boundaries which contain them inhere in their carefully measured out spaces for infantry and cavalry into a replica of the battle formation by squadron, rank and file. It is implicit also in their geometrical alignment of paths, tents and munitions depots, the importance they attached to time-keeping and the role of the drum in marking out time - all of this was expressly designed and articulated (through detailed explication as well as table and diagram) to enable the effective exercise of power - in the face of its anticipated loss. It was axiomatic to these writers that a position of strength could only be achieved by maximising visibility and activating Foucault's 'new kind of knowledge'17 by means of a thoroughly worked out system of conveying information about (and from) the enemy.
The centre for the control of this information was the general's tent (fig.1), its rounded shape and central positioning emblematic of its strategic, symbolic and spiritual significance as the visible seat of power and the source of all networks of information and surveillance. Exact geometry was of crucial importance in all the military writers' instructions for the setting up of the camp around it. Digges for example provides a clear and detailed diagram of the measurement of the area marked out for the disposal of bands and units around this focal point. Most significantly, the shape of his camp is conceived of and described as circular, though it is not diagrammatically represented as such (fig.2).
For example he talks about 'the Ringe of the Campe',18 specifies that the watch should form a 'ring round about the impalement of the camp', and that the pioneers should be placed 'without this Ring' as the outermost circle. His chapter-heading advertises what is contained within this circle - 'a camp well ordered and fortified'.19 This description is effected through a detailed gloss on his diagram (fig.2).
The general's pavilion is staked out around 'the Generals Standerde' by 'a square plat of ground 40 pace square'.20 The staking out of the terrain to be occupied by the high-ranking officials of the camp is important to all the manualists. In his copy of a French translation of Cataneo, Northumberland has underscored sentences specifying the tight security around the general's tent, to be located 'au beau milieu du camp'. For maximum protection, it is to be surrounded by the 'logis des gentilhommes' and 500 'braves hommes'.21 Tight security surrounding the General's tent (hinting at fears for its dispersion) can only be guaranteed by its place in the midst of a cocoon of successively high ranking officers; so Northumberland specifies in addition that the 'King or the Lieutenants pauilion' should be protected by 'certayne of the kings montes gaard .... for the surety of his p[er]sone'.22
The spectre of impotence is also implied in the divisions of the camp marked out in Digges's diagram. There is one maine street '40 paces broade' which runs from the General's tent whose chief function is to divide 'Horse Campe from the Foote campe.' There are 'two other cross ways 30 paces in breadth', which divide the 'Armed from the Vnarmed'. These two paths 'imbrace' two oblongs (40 x 550 paces) which can be divided into 'fiue lodgings of a hundred pace in length and 40 breadth' marked out by 'certayne passages of tenne pace in breadth' for speedy access 'vpon everye suddaine' to the place of assembly. The General's tent, at the hub of camp life, must not only be the most securely protected of sites; it must at the same time be the nucleus of a complex and multiple set of routes that connect with each other and intersect with it in order to combine facility of passage for incoming news with the maximum of safeguard. This is achieved by placing two hierarchically-ordered circles of tents at the outer parameters of the camp: those of the armourers, tailors, shoemakers 'and all suche like Artificers'. On the outside edge and in order to impale 'that part of the Campe that is not otherwise by Nature or Arte fortifyed' are placed the carters, the waggoners and their animals - all the carriages, in fact. Each pathway has a particular function; either to contain specified numbers of officers in lodgings (those marked G H I K on Digges's diagram) or to lead to a public gathering place to be viewed and counted (the area marked O). And this system of pathways, the veins and arteries of the camp, is itself contained by a protective outer circle of heavy goods vehicles that simultaneously provide the means of protection whilst the camp is in operation and its means of transportation when the time comes for it to move on.23 This preoccupation with camp layout as a means of averting the dangers of inadequate defence and exposure to alien forces underlies the provision of not one but several alternatives. Garrard for example provides three different diagrams of the way camps can be set out, two of which are Fourquevaux's models (figs 3 & 4) and Northumberland has diagrams of the camp, the quarters, and numerous flow-charts detailing arrangements for the day and night watches.24
Insurance against loss of control over army units is also achieved by the disposition of soldiers to be encamped into the companies and squadrons in which they will appear on the field which are then precisely measured out along pathways whose length, breadth, number and functions are itemised in order to maximise the speed and efficiency with which the men could respond 'vpon any alarom by day or night'. Here, considerations of space are important for the movement of ranks and files. Mendoza points out that if adequate distance is provided between the infantry and cavalry squadrons then the men 'may passe commodiouslie ... being able with facilitie to close one within another, as shalbe necessarie'. In addition, he explains the requirement for companies to be placed 30 or 40 paces from the place where they are to form into squadrons, and for the space between the front of the squadrons and the fortifications to be fifteen or twenty.25 The ostensible reason given is that soldiers take up far less space when they close in for the fight, but, as we shall see, the nocturnal camp scene in Henry V suggests that the comfort derived from huddling together helps to keep night fears of defencelessness at bay.
3. The Watch.
Clearly the epistemological principles underlying the set-out of the camp make for the 'new knowledge' of surveillance as a one-way process, adapted to the exigencies of observation of the enemy on the one hand and the anxiety on the other to impede the enemy's observation of you. Exposure to enemy strength can be forestalled by reinforcing the power that resides in ocular knowledge. This is achieved by spatially organising the way it is constituted in the camp so that it functions in equal balance with the power inherent in another kind of knowledge - that to do with strategies of secrecy, of keeping the enemy in the dark about your manoeuvres whilst being fully apprised of his. This is exemplified in the organisation of the watch through spying and reconnaissance - major strategies of surveillance.
The watch is an area singled out for the most detailed prescription in all of these military writers. It is also the area most clearly vulnerable to enemy infiltration, and therefore the area most in need of the operation of strong ocular systems of knowledge. Foucault elevates this to a conceptual level as 'panopticism' in his description of the design and role of Bentham's panopticon. Panopticism, as a way of visualising the role and functions of the watch as one of the exercises of discipline that 'coerce by means of observation'26 is also a means of facilitating one-way systems of knowledge. The panopticon was based upon the principle of complete visibility. It was to consist of a central observation tower from which a supervisor could see into all the windows of the circular building surrounding it. In what follows I want to look at the organisation of the watch in relation to this model in order to bring out identical patterns of visual auditory and vocal control - indeed all the means of assuring 'the automatic functioning of power'.27
In the small, enclosed 'citie' of the camp and in a situation where it is of primary importance for security that exits and entrances are strictly patrolled, the first task of the commanding officer responsible for castrametation upon arrival is, in Northumberland's words, to 'appoint a sufficient number of men both on horsseback and on fote to watch and waard the campe'.28 A delicate balance must be established at the outset and maintained between the number of men inhabiting the camp and the appointment of the watch and ward to ensure that the 'men be not ov[er]travailed wyth watch'. A 'good and strong' watch should be appointed 'at the artillery' since it is their numbers that 'wyll bear for the saulfe keping for ... the wealth of the hole campe'.29 Fears of dispersion inform the preoccupation with spatial organisation. Northumberland's provision for the encirclement of the camp by footscouts 'vj score yards from ... wythout the sayd campe to harken yf any enemyes do approach' and to 'give warnyng as occasyon shall p[ro]ve'30 makes explicit the susceptibility to enemy encroachment. This provision underlays all the security arrangements, for the other writers go into equally detailed arrangements for the watch in order to establish the means of regulating and policing information in and out of the camp. In addition these provisions are a means by which spaces are controlled and abstracted so that physical movement is reduced to its narrowest confines.
The enemy within is no less of a threat to security than the enemy without, and must be safeguarded against, since desertion and mutiny31 were two of the most frequent offences in Elizabethan armies. In 1590 for example only half of the two hundred men recruited for service at Ostend actually arrived. Frequently desertion was contrived by the leaders of the troops, who stood to gain on two fronts - they pocketed both bribes and the journey money provided by the government for every man levied.32 John Norris, fulminating against deserters to the Privy Council, gave written instructions to the justices to have the runaways recaptured. But the justices were lax and in any case not the sole officials responsible for rounding them up. In addition villagers hid them and helped them escape. Hence Norris's wrath against the Hampshire authorities, for not one single deserter was caught.33 Delays also resulted in desertion. In 1592, again under the captaincy of John Norris, the masters of the vessels that were to carry troops from Poole to Brittany refused to set sail - Cruickshank puts this down to their reluctance to exchange their more valuable merchandise for soldiers.34
Understood against the background of such conditions as these, the detailed earnestness which attended arangements for the watch bears witness to its importance in keeping the enemy at bay and maintaining supervision (particularly at night) over the actions of the soldiers under command. Digges (and Garrard reproducing Digges verbatim) by contrast disapprove of the placement of watch outside the trenches of their camp and both provide arguments against the office of the Scoute maister, an invention of a 'kind of Forraine Scoute, that the paynes of a few might leaue the rest at ease'.35 While Mendoza recommends cavalry guards to be placed outside the fortification of the camp 'in such partes and wayes as the enimie is to passe'36 he joins Digges and Garrard in applauding Roman precedent for the organisation of the night watch in such a way that one third of the army remained armed whilst the remainder slept. This armed third was divided into quarters and one quarter patrolled the trenches 'to hear and see if they coulde discerne any noyse or stirring nighe the Campe' whilst the other three quarters rested. Each quarter took its turn in relieving the patrolling quarter at regular intervals 'So that the enimy coulde neuer approche their Campe, but they founde one third part in Armes, who were able to keepe them play, till the rest had put themselues in order.'37 Northumberland, however, came to rethink one of his dichotomous 'plats' for encamping drawn up to display the Roman model. In A Booke of Memorialls38 he has drawn a few faint lines through the whole page on which appears some introductory text which states a preference for the Greek above the Roman 'orderly forming of the out side of there campe'.39 That he came to do so raises the interesting question of whether he was one of the few who identified with Greek military practices rather than Roman ones. Renaissance stereotypes of Greek cunning, trickiness and perfidy were certainly more in keeping with the by now familiar accounts of the culture of surveillance (espionage) in Elizabeth's court.
In the organisation of the watch, different kinds of knowledges interact in the same way as a group of actors on stage - as a carefully paced and spaced-out performance, in which the groups are arranged in 'spatial unities' which function contiguously and with individual members occasionally singled out for a solo turn before stepping back into their corporate role. Garrard singles out for detailed comment the importance of recording 'every small particular thing' so that the 'Prince, Generall, Collonell, or Captaine ... may with the eye of his mind, run over & peruse the whole, one by one in due proportion, briefly & plainly in a table, as t[he] view of a gallant theater, from whence the veile of the shading curtaine is suddainly drawn, and make apparent to the eyes of all the beholders, the sight of some sumpteous shew'.40 So Foucault's choice of the theatre as an image of choreographed movement and orchestrated sound is peculiarly appropriate to these writers' descriptions of watch, sentinel and ward in that they constitute a striking corollary to the cells of his panopticon model. These cells 'are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualised and constantly visible'. As a preventive for helplessness, '[t]he panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognise immediately.'41
In the treatises, however, secrecy is a crucial element in this mimesis. Garrard lists it as one of the six 'special points appertaining to souldiers of all sorts', who 'must be secrete, and haue regard that they disclose nothing, though sometimes they understand the pretence of the higher powers'.42 Northumberland confines himself to its most obvious application in the arrangements for passing on the watchword. This should be given only to the five 'discretist' soldiers in the company of foot. These five should be positioned so close to each other that 'in a monesheene night they may see the one band to the other round about the hole campe, and in a darcke night they will send evry halfe quarter of an hour one band to an other to know what steering or noys is hard of ev[er]y part and not to troble the campe with any alarm except there bee cause whye'.43 The oxymoron of a soldier who is 'secrete', 'close', reveals specific areas of vulnerability in his position vis-a-vis his superiors and as a (potentially dangerous) cog in the security machine. Paradoxically, the goal of secrecy is to define long-range visibility even more sharply. If visibility is impaired, one of the other senses must take over. Secrecy does not therefore function to occlude the senses but to focus all the more sharply (for the furtherance of internal discipline) those most appropriate to dealing with adverse climatic conditions. So the visual knowledge chain is supplemented by vocal means of maintaining continual contact with each section of the camp. Northumberland organises the scouts on horseback and secures them into the communication network of sight and sound within the camp whilst at the same time keeping the enemy without ignorant of its procedures. These scouts are also five in number, and should also 'send one sound to an other ev[er]y halfe quarter of an howere, and the captaynes of the Scoutes to be of a more fore as a body of a watche for the succour of the rest'.44 By this means the safety of the camp is assured. Horse and foot participate in an elaborate movement orchestrated by cannon and trumpet. The sound of a culverin 'sygnyfyieng to the whole campe that the watch is sett'45 is followed by a trumpet 'blowen to watch at the marshalls pavyllion' and answered by the Lieutenant's trumpet.46 This must be repeated in the morning at the relief of the watch. Rules of silence must be strictly observed and can only be punctuated by controlled and precisely timed blasts of the trumpet.47
Once the watch is sounded by trumpet and cannon, Northumberland requires strict curfew conditions: all taverns should be closed and everyone except officers should 'repayr to their Lodgings'. Above all, at the time of the setting of the watch there should be silence in the camp so that 'all scryes and alarums may bee hard'.48 However, if the army is in the process of besieging an enemy town, 'it is meet' that this trumpet call 'bee blowne in some other place farre from the king or the Lieutenant's pavylion'49 so that the Commander's quarters can be identified neither by sight nor sound. Apprehensions of breaches of security are thus lulled by means of an intricate counterpointing of movement and sound, and advantage over the enemy is established by maintaining the secrecy and silence in the execution of these essential steps for the 'surety of the camp'.50 Here, as Raimond de Fourquevaux points out, military advisers have a lesson to learn from the arch-enemy, the Turk: 'It would not be amisse that wee did keepe amongst us the silence that the Turkes do use in their departing from their lodgings ... their silence ... is such, that a man might thinke them rather to be dumme, then otherwise: whereas we do farre differ from them that ... wee could not well heare if God should thunder amongst us'.51 Like the panopticon 'the exercise of power' is 'perfected' economically, efficaciously, continuously and above all 'without noise'.52
As a major precaution against loss of military strength, knowledge networks set in motion as relays of information are therefore a major objective of camp organisation. As such, they must function at levels of maximum security internally whilst at the same time ensuring that the enclosed nature of the camp permits a vital one-way flow of information about the enemy from outside to in. Special emissaries are marked out for special duties in seeking out this information. Silence and discretion is important here, too. Mendoza provides the details: the cavalry troops accompanied by 15 or 20 'good guydes' should be sent out in various directions under the command of an experienced officer who carries 'a soundnes of iudgement to view, without making any hurlie burlie.'53 Stealing from the camp at night, these troops perform an important function in the double action of being informed about the enemy whilst keeping the enemy in ignorance about you. To ensure smooth running of this operation a complex chain of one-way information and a series of fail-safe measures is calibrated to prevent any knowledge of the enemy from falling back into enemy hands, and to communicate this knowledge to the appropriate commanding officer. Since their reconnoitring function places them in too vulnerable a position to be entrusted with the password, the leader of the troops issues each soldier with an interim means of identification 'when they are abroad'. This acts as a double protection - as a homing-device for strays and as insurance against enemy appropriation of the password. Having set up this communication channel with his own soldiers whilst at the same time ensuring that the enemy is denied access, the officer accompanying such nocturnal intelligence missions should send a man on in advance to warn the sentinel of their return to camp so 'that they take not alarom vppon seeing of the troupe', and so that the captaine is given advance warning of their return. The sentinel must then ensure that this courier passes on the news of arrival to the general or the campmaster general. It is only then that an officer of the 'Cordeguarde' (corps de guard) can issue the password, and only after the sentinels have 'wel taken knowledge of him' can he be suffered 'to passe'.54 Returning infantry or cavalry troops or scouts, or any other service are 'to sende ... at the howers that centinels are set, to giue warning by some soldior which shall go before, that they make no sturre, or raise any alarum vpon the sight of them' and they must march slowly so that the commander has adequate notice of their arrival in camp. Those who are authorised to enter camp by knowledge of the password in order to communicate with the general are to be escorted in relay by the single sentinel to the double, and thence on to the captain of the cordeguarde, who will deliver him to the principal officer who will then tell the commanding officer if it is important news. Great fires can be made in the market place to counteract fears of enemy invasion of the lodgings at night and to discover 'whosoeuer cometh, and dazeleth them not to be able to see againe who there attendeth'.55
Mendoza provides a striking example of the post-Foucauldian doubleness of discourses that articulate and represent powerlessness through the models of knowledge/power in surveillance that they describe. This is manifest in the language used to inflect this passage with alarming signals of disempowerment. For example, ocular power will be negated if the commanding officer lacks 'a soundnes of iudgement to view'; the ambiguity of a silent, secret soldier is reinforced by the fact that as part of the night watch he must steal from the camp at night - yet amidst a flurry of nocturnal activity familiar to those involved in (and objects of) the arrangements for twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock supervision. Signals, passwords, relays of couriers, advance warnings, elaborate precautions against alarm-raising - all pile up into an edifice built to stand in the face of the dread of enfeeblement that lurks so near all of these textual surfaces.
4. The English camp in Henry V.
The shift between manualistic and dramatic discourse is quite smoothly achieved through shared themes and discursive strategies. Even though there is little explicitly said about the construction of the camp in the play, it is clear that these elaborate safety measures, the segmentation, enclosure, hierarchisation, and articulated placement of each unit and each individual have an important bearing upon the functioning of Shakespeare's representation of Henry's camp at Agincourt.
The arrangement of the camp conforms to that specified in the manuals. It is clear by inference that the General (Henry) is correctly located at the centre of a chain of command. The encampment scene opens with Henry's commanders 'the lords of England' buzzing round him. His presence in their midst figures the location of his pavilion, in which he 'desire(s) them all' (IV.i.27)56 to congregate for a parley. True to the spirit of ever-constant vigilance it is Henry's duty as the head of the chain of command to know what is happening in every corner. This includes knowledge of his men's thoughts and feelings, particularly feelings of fear. Having demonstrated solicitude for the physical comfort of his high command by telling Lord Erpingham that 'A good soft pillow for that good white head/Were better than a churlish turf of France' (IV.i.14-15) it is now his duty to apprise himself of the tenor and mood of the rest of the camp.57 His encounter with one of his captains (Fluellen) conforms to the requirement that the general appoint men in command who are literate, numerate and cognisant of military theory. Henry is therefore reassured that
|
Though it appear a little out of fashion, There is much care and valour in this Welshman, (IV.i.82-83) |
for Fluellen knows the value of 'true and ancient prerogatifs and laws of the wars' its 'ceremonies', 'cares' and forms. Certainly a complex figure in terms of dramatic form, rendered so by layers of comedy and irony, it is nevertheless true to say that Fluellen is a conscientious and dependable captain (though literal, forgetful and humourless in himself) singled out from an order characterised by illiteracy, corruption, dishonesty.58 Notably, Fluellen is cognisant of the value of silence from manual sources: he reproves Gower, Pistol and the king himself with the information that 'there is no tiddle-taddle nor pibble-babble in Pompey's camp' where all is 'sobriety' and 'modesty' (IV.i.70-74).
To the extent that he recognises Fluellen's expertise in military theory, Henry justifies those critics who regard him as an ideal general. To an extent also he conforms to Northumberland's copious notes on the virtues required of the high command. He provides detailed guidelines for the character and qualities required in a General in both the Alnwick and Petworth documents.59 For instance Henry in his choice of officers (Fluellen, even Pistol) matches up to the need for a General to select men of duty, judgement and 'understanding'. This is only possible if the general himself is a man 'well furnisched with military art'.60 It is also prudent to 'build upon'61 advantages gained over the enemy (as Henry is about to build upon the advantages gained at Harfleur) but with caution: he should not embark upon a second action 'with tow great confidence, letting slippe all good and as secure occasions and means to the effecting of the second, as if he had a worser fortune in the beginning'.62
Thereafter, however, Henry sets out upon a series of unconventional actions that mark him out as a leader who does not conform to manual prescription. Henry's roaming amongst his men in disguise is (according to T.W. Craik's Introduction to the Arden edition) within 'a dramatic tradition current in the 1590s ... in which a ruler in disguise mingles with his subjects'.63 However, Anne Barton has identified this tradition as belonging to a form of 'wish-dream of a peasantry harried and perplexed by a new class of officials' in medieval times.64 This form of encounter was not without its sixteenth-century critics, either. George Puttenham for example defines such occurances as instances of indecorum, illustrating the figure acyron, 'the uncouth', with two episodes of behaviour that are socially and politically inappropriate to a monarch's comportment toward the populace. The first illustration is where the Tanner of Tamworth meets Edward IV, travelling incognito; the second is where Elizabeth's coach was stopped by Sergeant Benlowes, wishing to speak to the Queen.65 Northumberland, alert to the infelicities of indecorum, advises that the prince should be present at the scene of battle, whether at home or abroad' unless he be too young ('ouer greenes in years') too old or too sick - or prevented from being there because of state business where 'the affairs of the state resting vppon soe tickell termes, as his absens may -ore hinder in the one, then profitt in the other'.66 Other circumstances in which it is better if the monarch is absent from the scene of action are: if he is 'slothfull and/or slack by nature, or unduly influenced by 'vnreasonable affections to perticular vnworthy fauorites, or too passionate, rash, headstrong, opinionated, neglectful, sensual,67 or 'marked with the note of stupedite'.68 Henry is none of these, so it is far better that 'his owen eies will frame the minds of all his substitutes, whether officers or soldiers, to appere in ther dutyes with more integrite and exactnes'.69
In the manuals and manuscripts, the qualities that (royal) leaders should possess are in accordance with a set of conventions different from those of the stage in the 1590s in which a disguised monarch mingles with his subjects. They are part of the set of conventions regulating the duties of the watch and the chain of command. As I hope I have shown, the guidelines in the manuals for correct practice and procedure in the running of a camp and the arrangements that minutely list the duties of each soldier on the eve of battle insist on the strict order of precedence for maintaining the chains of command and hierarchies of information and observation. Each individual knows his place and function in the camp as well as on the battle field, and wanders off on his own initiative on pain of severe punishment. This must include the general, for on his unique position at the still centre of the various ordered activities depends the safety and correct functioning of the entire force. What Henry is doing is jumping the chain of command. There may be reasons for this. It may be for instance that the chain of information has broken down, so he has to 'see' and 'hear' for himself. Or it may be that personal and professional insecurity have driven him to check up on his officers-in-command in order to satisfy himself that they are fulfilling their offices. But none of these are cited or made manifest as reasons for adopting the persona of 'a gentleman of a company' (IV.i.40) to Pistol and Fluellen. Normally, Fluellen would be expected to give information to his immediate superior which would then travel up the chain of command until it reached the proper place. According to Digges, for example, information should pass from the 'scourers' (the scouts) to the scoutmaster and from him to the marshal,70 and Garrard tells us that it is the office of the Scoute master or master of the watch 'nightly to attend upo[n] the General, to receiue the watchword, the which at the setting of the watch he shal secretly deliuer unto the Captaines'.71 Henry's insecurity as England's monarch (due to doubtful legitimacy - his father usurped the throne from Richard II) compel him to bypass conventional channels of information and go direct to his subjects for confirmation of his wisdom and valour.
Henry's disregard for the itemised duties in camp of the officers in his command72 is interestingly contrasted to the good practice born of experience in captaincy and knowledge of the role and function of this office exhibited here by his appointed officers73 - Captain Fluellen and Ensign Pistol. In a dangerous and vulnerable position where the two rival camps are so close that 'the fixed sentinels almost receive/The secret whispers of each others watch' (Chorus: IV.O.6-7) it is foolhardy to wander around in disguise so nobody can recognise you - you are undermining all the safeguards for surveillance set in operation as part of the encamping procedure. Henry not only places himself in danger of being apprehended as a spy; he also places the men and officers in charge of his company at risk. Fortunately not only his officers and ensigns but also his unranked soldiers74 observe the protocol far better than he. The first thing Pistol and Williams do to demonstrate their good training in camp procedure is to question a suspicious newcomer:
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Pistol: Qui vous la? King Henry: A friend. Pistol: Discuss unto me: art thou officer, Or art thou base, common, and popular? King Henry: I am a gentleman of a company. Pistol: Trail'st thou the puissant pike? King Henry: Even so. (IV.i.36-43) |
Since every man has his allotted place and duties, and it is the duty of every captain to know the positioning and whereabouts of every man in his band, it is perfectly correct for Pistol and Williams to check out the sudden appearance of a man they are not able to account for in their own company:
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Williams: - Who goes there? King Henry: A friend. Williams: Under what captain serve you? King Henry: Under Sir Thomas Erpingham. (IV i. 89-92) |
In neither instance are these soldiers satisfied with the lack of specificity of Henry's response and want to know more precise details of placement.
In order to get the information he wants (to appease his insecurity and vanity, to justify to himself a costly and difficult campaign, to assure himself of his rightful claim and above all to test out claims that God is on his side) Henry breaks in on the watchfulness of his soldiers in order to gain by devious means a knowledge of what they think of him as king, as commander and as the custodian of their souls. According to the manuals (though not perhaps for a hero) this is unprofessional conduct. It is unprofessional also to take on the function of observer single-handed: as we have seen, the manuals provide for the organisation and movement of the army as a unit, in which all parts articulate with each other as do the parts of the human body.
Northumberland, for example, in considering the choice of a leader at the point of war would 'prepare the head before the boddy, though in a well fore seeing state this boddy is to be prepared, and in a redynes before the head; ... there is noe state but assumeth to it selfe power to chuse his owen Generall vnlesse a King doe chuse himselfe the cheefe commander'.75 In Henry V the head usurps. In abrogating to himself entirely the various functions of the watch Henry by-passes the hierarchy and network of observation that secures the army from external harm and guarantees internal security that will prevent the army's projected plans and movements from being leaked to enemy agents. By putting his private body at risk he puts at risk even further the already threatened safety of the public body made up of men who are entrusted to him. His men in fact can't afford to sleep sound at nights because he is not performing the functions he ought to be performing by keeping the king's private person out of harm's way. He is also endangering his men's lives by not being where he is supposed to be - he can neither receive information nor take advice on how to act on it nor fulfil his role as the heartbeat of the hive. Such derelictions of duty as these invest the Chorus's blissful rendering of him as 'royal captain of this ruined band/Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent' (IV.0.29-30) with even more of an ironic edge than it is already accustomed to receive.76
Likewise his own recourse to the bee analogy cannot be taken at face value any more than the Archibishop of Canterbury's use of it in the first act of the play (I.ii.186-204) since testimony of the orderly, hierarchical structure of the state - an idealised rendering - is delivered by a man the audience knows (from the dealings in the first scene) to be a worldly and opportunistic egotist. In addition, Annabel Patterson examines the archbishop's bee metaphor against the background of worries and insecurities chronicled in the Holinshed edition of 1587, where disasters, crimes of treason and their punishment anxiously bespeak a desire for law and order made manifest in a narrative which uses the analogy of the ordering of the natural world as a sanction for existing social hierarchies.77 This is given even sharper point by her contention that the Folio version of the play was being written at the very moment of Essex's bid for power and popularity to rival the aging queen's, thereby investing it with 'an extreme form of topicality ... a moment of historical expectation that can be dated with precision.'78 Henry's recourse to the proverb about 'gather[ing] honey from the weed' (IV.i.11) designed to demonstrate to his men how a good general can draw some good from the harmfully close presence of the French assumes a contiguity of activity which he himself is in the very act of sabotaging.
In a military context, Henry might think that his disguise will allow him to acquire greater control through knowledge, but in fact the kind of knowledge he gains cannot be mobilised in the coming fray and therefore does not constitute executive power. In this way too his own appeal to the bee analogy deepens the ambiguity already initated by the Archbishop of Canterbury's use of it. The general should be at the still centre of a hive of activity, but without the presence of the queen bee in her allotted position the hive's activities are useless. So it is that Henry's unconventional behaviour makes others' jobs redundant. It is Erpingham's task to jostle the King back into his proper position:
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My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence, Seek through your camp to find you'. (IV.i.282-3) |
In Foucauldian terms, Henry's actions undermine the "new technique" of supervision and spatial and temporal placement of individuals in order to "isolate" and "map" them - techniques that make for the construction of the military camp as a "functional site". But by "taking charge of the time of individual existences" Henry attempts regulation of "the relations of time, bodies and forces",79 though for his own idiosyncratic purposes.
In sum, there is a sense in which Henry may be said to be setting up "useful communications" within the enclosed spaces and allocations of time operating in the military camp; that is, by interrupting established routines in order to "supervise the conduct of each individual" the more effectively, the better to assess that individual's conduct and the better "to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits"80 in order to augment and consolidate his control over his men. However, Henry's surveillance manoeuvres give rise to a "new form of knowledge" only at the expense of another kind of knowledge which is indispensable to what Foucault describes in some detail as the
Finally, with regard to the message of the play as a whole, the victory of the English against impossible odds reinforces another lesson incessantly drummed in by all the manual writers - that victory belongs to God alone. Historically speaking, the full ironic content of this particular victory doesn't manifest itself until much later, in 1599 in fact, when the writing of Shakespeare's Henry V is thought to have been completed.87 The completion occurred significantly in the aftermath of the French loss of Calais in 1596 to the Archduke Albert, the new governor of the Spanish Low Countries.88 The playtext was also completed in the context of debate over Elizabeth's method of fighting foreign wars abroad in order to maintain peace at home: ironies hovering around another (and perhaps contradictory) manual dictum - that God takes care of those who keep their military affairs in order.
References
1 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London: Penguin, 1991), pp.170-171.
5 I am grateful to Emeritus Professor Gordon Batho, Durham, for allowing me to use his list of Northumberland's books on war.
6 I.A.A. Thompson, "The Impact of War". In Peter Clark (ed.), The European Crisis of the 1590's (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 276.
7 R.B. Wernham, After the Armada (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 262-285; Wallace T. McCaffrey, Elizabeth I War and Politics 1588-1603 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 171-195.
8 Lindsay B/ynton, The Elizabethan Militia 1558-1638 (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), pp. 190-200.
11 Wernham, p. 321, 336; see also J.B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth 1558-1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn., 1959; repr. 1992), pp. 413-416; The Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. John X. Evans (Oxford, 1972), pp. xxxvi-lxxvii; McCaffrey (1992), pp. 157-160.
12 Black, pp. 413-416; Williams, Evans ed., pp. xxxvi-lxxvii; McCaffrey (1992), p. 159.
13 Black, p. 414; Evans (ed.), p. xli; Wernham, pp. 321-322, 336.
14 Wernham, p. 319n: by 12 October 1,700 men were either sick or missing. It was said that deserters were being put in the way of passports by the Dieppe Papists. See also pp. 358-417.
15 Stephen Clucas, "It were an dishonour not to serue". Honour, Public Office and Renaissance Careers - the case of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, Unpublished Paper, June 1996, p. 10.
16 For example, Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (London: Longman, 1988), p. 138.
17 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 170-171.
18 Leonard Digges, Stratioticos (1579), p. 174. For convenience, references (unless otherwise stated) have been taken from the 1579 edition, though the material cited appears in the 1590 edition also.
21 Petworth 8/6; annotated copy of Le Capitaine de Ierosme Cataneo, contenant la maniere de fortifier places, assaillir, & defendre. Auec l'ordre qu'on doit tenir pour asseoir vn camp, & mespartir les logis d'iceluy (Lyon, 1593), p. 138. Matthew Sutcliffe, another writer on Northumberland's library shelves, supplements this by providing details about who does what and what goes where - where to pitch tent, where to unload, where the ordonnance is to be placed once the General's tent has been positioned and a convenient place has been marked and staked out. This task is performed by the Quartermaster general - a man appointed for this duty precisely for the good judgement he is able to exercise. The rest of the army can follow only once this has been settled, and only then can unloading, pitching tent and positioning of ordinance take place. Matthew Sutcliffe, The Practice, Proceedings and Lawes of Armes (1593), p.139, p. 144. See also Raimond de Fourquevaux, Instructions for the Warres, trans. Paul Iue (1589), p. 199, who stipulates in addition to division of labour according to rank, the need for precision and expertise in those responsible 'for division [of the camp] thereof' so that 'every man should know hys place after once lodging, although that no bodie do shew him his quarter'.
22 Alnwick MS. W.11 1a-b; Mss of the Duke of Northumberland: Letters & Papers Vol. 7; Vol. 8 Military Affairs (1603), fol. 16r; see also Digges (1579), p. 172; Sutcliffe, p. 144.
23 Digges (1579), p. 171. Mendoza reinforces the need for maximum security by advocating the use of natural as well as artifcial means by 'putting wagons round about the quarters within the diches which are made, by raising trenches ... leauing co[n]uenient places to issue out the wagons' as an added precaution against enemy penetration. Bernadino de Mendoza, Theorique and Practise of Warre, trans. Sir Edwarde Hoby (1597), p. 45.
24 William Garrard, The Arte of Warre (1597), p. 270. Northumberland: diagram of camp layout, Alnwick MS 512, p. 102 and Petworth House Archives, Leconfield MS 137/1 (loose leaf); diagrams of quarters, Alnwick MS 512, ff. 507-9 and Leconfield MS 137/1 (loose leaf); charting of nocturnal watches, Alnwick MS. 512, ff. 110, [111, 114 crossed out] 119, 124. Camp layout is also a matter of protracted discussion. One contested topic was the question of where those on the periphery of army life should best be placed. The 'Pioners' (voluntary manual labourers not numbered among the fighting force) have ambivalent status in the manuals. They are bundled together with 'all sortes of Labourers, that aptlie can not, or oughte not bee placed in or aboute the former Courtes or quarters of Assemblie'; Digges (1590), p. 344. Digges also makes specific provision for them at the outer edges of the camp. An illustration of these writers' interest in war as an intellectual pursuit is the ordering of the camp as part of an ordered microcosm modelled on the Aristotelian conception of the universe. The general, who is either the monarch (appointed by God) or the monarch's appointed leader, is at the centre of a concentrically organised distribution of space from high-ranking officials immediately surrounding him spreading out to the lowest ranking (civilian) workers at the outer edge of the camp. Digges (1579), p. 171; Digges (1590), pp. 343-344. For a similarly conceptualised model which makes alternative arrangements for the pioneers see, for example, Matthew Sutcliffe, The Practice, Proceedings and Lawes of Armes (1593), p. 144, also to be found in Northumberland's library.
26 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 170.
28 Military Affairs, fol. 13r.
31 Conditions for the troops in Ireland for example were such that they were perpetually on the verge of mutiny. See C.G. Cruickshank, Elizabeth's Army (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 165, 171. See also for example G. Parker's discussion of dersertion in The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).
32 Cruikshank., p. 166. See also pp. 62-63 and Lindsay Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia 1558-1688 (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1971), p. 190, for deserters among the gentry whose properties were on the south and west coast. Elizabeth publicly denounced those who 'fled for fear farther into the middle of the land' in a speech made in 1588. Ibid., p.190.
33 Cruickshank, pp. 63-64. In addition, there are recorded instances of passes being issued to deserters by clerks in collusion with captains. In 1591, for example, deserters (arrested in Cambridge) had been able to purchase passes for prices of up to £ 4. Ibid., p. 166.
35 Digges (1579), p. 98; Garrard, p. 234.
38 Alnwick MS 512; A Booke of Memorialls of things belonging to the warrs disorderly as yet dissgested and placed
41 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.
43 Military Affairs, fol. [14].
47 Another writer, Raimond de Fourquevaux, not on Northumberland's list (though he could well have been) specifies that the trumpet should sound the changeover of the watch at 'some sure clocke' and insures efficiency in dismantling the camp by recommending the Roman practice of doing it at three sounds of the Captain General's trumpet. At the first sound, the tents and belongings were packed up; at the second, everything was loaded up; at the third, every man was in the field and marched to the place appointed by the General. Instructions for the Warres (1589), p. 206, p. 208.
48 Military Affairs, fol. 15v.
51 Fourquevaux, p. 208.
52 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 206.
56 Unless otherwise stated, quotations are taken from the Gary Taylor edition of Henry V, The World's Classics Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
57 See Gary Taylor (ed.), pp. 42-43 for a different explanation of Henry's disguise. Taylor's argument is that Henry puts on disguise in order to gain solitude - but an alternative reading is available if this scene is located within manual precept.
58 For matters of ranking and notions of professionalism, see for example Johnson, Elizabeth I, pp. 170-172; J.R. Hale, War and Society (London: Fontana Press, 1985), pp. 127-152, and Renaissance War Studies (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), pp. 225-246 as well as Digges's schema for reform of the captaincy (1579 and 1590). All the treatises have a section on the duties and role of the captain.
59 Alnwick MS 511, fol. 4v. Northumberland's notes on certain specific duties of the 'Generall' are bracketed off in the margin and annotated 'No: Mau: Vere'. I take him to be referring either to the practices of Sir John Norris, Prince Maurice of Nassau, and Sir Francis Vere as commanders to be emulated, or to writings of theirs relating to the Dutch wars. See also Leconfield MS 137/1, 'Of Prudence and Polecy in a generall'.
60 Alnwick MS 511, fol. 4 verso.
62 Ibid., fol. 4v, annotated 'No: [Norris] Albert' [Archduke Albert, of Austria, husband of Isabella , Philip II of Spain's daughter].
63 T.W. Craik (ed.), King Henry V, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 10.
64 Anne Barton, "The King Disguised: Shakespeare's Henry V and the Comical History (1975)". In Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 212, and Annabel Patterson's elaboration in Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 89-91.
65 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589) (Menston, Scolar Press facsimile, 1968), pp. 214-215, cited in Patterson, (1989), p.89.
66 Leconfield MS 137/1, p. 160.
72 Most of the manual writers of the 1590s are preoccupied with who does what in the camp and on the field. See for example Digges (1579), part 3 chapters 1-15; the 1590 additions include extended sections on the duties of the master of victuals, quarter master, muster master genral, the lord marshal with the lord genral (chapters 3-10); Mendoza, pp. 34-49; Sutcliffe, pp. 35, passim; Garrard, pp. 11-14; Alnwick Ms 512, fols. 519, 524, 525. Leconfield Ms 137/1, fols. 13-37.
73 See Leconfield MS 137/1, fol. 160. Henry's positive qualities as a commander have in this instance attracted officers of 'integrite', 'exactnes' and 'merit'.
74 In Annabel Patterson's compelling account of the two versions of this play, Williams, though unranked, is not unnamed. In the extended and more radical (Folio) version, Patterson argues, he is placed at the centre of a scene of ideological complexity in which 'the rhetorical shallowness of [Henry's] populism' is opposed to another conception of the popular altogether, one in which Williams, a man of intelligence who won't consent to Henry's fantasy of popular leadership, is an 'un(common) critic of [Henry's] cause merely because it is in the national interest'. Patterson, pp.88-91. Brian Loughrey argues for an equally radical Quarto version on generic grounds; whereas the Folio provides an epic frame and an historical narrative in the grand manner, the Quarto, by mixing high with low registers narrows the gap between the king and the commoners. The text is thus able to present Henry as 'a gentle gamester' whilst robbing the confrontation between King and (unnamed) soldiers of none of its questioning of authority. Indeed, Loughrey argues, the 'pride and dignity of plebeian resistance' is intensified by being conducted with a soldier whose very anonymity proclaims the cause of the common man. The Cronicle History of Henry the fift, With his battell fought at Agin Court in france, Togither with Auntient Pistoll, ed. Graham Holderness (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), pp. 26-29.
76 See, for example, Anne Barton, The king disguised, pp. 214-217; Chris Fitter, "A Tale of Two Branaghs: Henry V". In Ivo Kamps (ed.), Shakespeare Left and Right (London, 1991), pp. 259-275; Alan Sinfield (with Jonathan Dollimore), "History and Ideology, Masculinity and Miscegenation: The Instance of Henry V". In Alan Sinfield, Faultlines (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 118-127.
77 Patterson (1989), pp. 80-81.
79 Foucault, Discpline and Punish, p. 143.
83 Northumberland to Cecil, 3rd July 1601, Cecil Papers Vol. 182, fol. 81v.
84 See for example Chris Fitter (1991), pp. 259-275.
87 Taylor (ed.), "Introduction", p.5.
88 Calais was the last of the English strongholds gained through Agincourt, and had been signed over to the French in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559. Its capture by Spanish troops meant that Elizabeth and her war council's hopes of getting it back were dashed forever. See, for example, McCaffrey (1992), pp. 114-115, 198-199.
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