Combat of the Thirty
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The Combat of the Thirty (March 27 1351), was an episode in the struggle for the succession to the duchy of Brittany. It was fought between thirty champions, knights and squires on either side, in a challenge issued by Jean de Beaumanoir, a captain of Charles of Blois supported by the king of France, to Robert Bramborough, a captain of Jean de Montfort supported by the king of England.
Robert Bramborough, the English captain of Ploërmel, having continued his ravages, in spite of a truce, in the district commanded by Jean de Beaumanoir, the captain of Josselin, de Beaumanoir sent him a challenge, which resulted in an emprise —an arranged passage of arms— which took place on the 27th of March 1351, near Ploërmel, between picked combattants.
Beaumanoir commanded thirty Bretons, Bramborough a mixed force of twenty Englishmen, six German mercenaries and four Breton partisans of Montfort. The battle, fought with swords, daggers, spears and axes, mounted or on feet, was of the most desperate character, in its details very reminiscent of the last fight of the Burguadians in the Nibelungenlied, especially in the celebrated advice of Geoffroy du Bois to his wounded leader, who was asking for water: "Drink your blood, Beaumanoir; that will quench your thirst!".
In the end the victory was decided by Guillaume de Montauban, who mounted his horse and overthrew seven of the English champions, the rest being forced to surrender. All the combatants on either side were either dead or seriously wounded, Bramborough being among the slain. The prisoners were well treated and released on payment of a small ransom.
While the combat did not have any real effect on the war, neither did it settle political issues surrounding it, it was considered the finest expression of chivalry by contemporaries. It was sung by trouvères, retold in the chronicles of Froissart and largely admired, and honoured in verse and the visual arts. A commemorative stone was placed at the site of the combat. The renown attached to those who participated were such that twenty years later, Jean Froissart noticed a scarred survivor at the table of Charles V, where he was honoured above all others due to having been one of the Thirty.
References
- A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman (1978)
- Le Poème du combat des Trente, in the Pantheon litteraire; Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce, c. iv. pp. 45 and 110ff., and pp. 338-340.
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