The Battle of the Golden Spurs
Drink: Shield and Friend
Ratings:
Strength: 1/5 (sling)
Skill: 4/5 (foreign legion)
Rank: 4/5 (knight of the realm)
[ingredients:]
- delicious Flemmish food
- friends
- the element of surprise
[preparation:]
- Invite some friends over with an offer of delicious Belgian chocolates, Trappist Ales, pommes frites, and steamed mussels.
- While their mouths are full, ask them to say “Shield and Friend” five times fast.
- Punch the face of those who are unable to do so.
- Wait in the bushes for their friends to come to your house, jump them, and steal their watches/earrings.
Background
Not a people known for fighting
Flanders, the Dutch/Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, has seen its fair share of major battles. Waterloo, Ypres, and the Battle of the Bulge, to name a few. One trait common to these battles is that they involved peoples other than the Flemish fighting for control of Europe. Historically, Europe has used Flanders as its sandlot, a convenient rallying place for Great Powers to play games of Kick the Can for neighborhood bragging rights. The Battle of the Golden Spurs, in 1302, is a notable instance of the Flemmish reppin’ in their own hood.
It is also, incidentally, one of history’s great examples of the military application of tongue twisters. Not since the days of cavemen have a few men wrung so much mileage out of a few key words.
Say our names three times fast, or we'll clobber you and take your mammoth.
Several inopportune circumstances coincided to bring out the Flemmish fighting spirit. France had officially added Flanders to its crown lands in 1297, but had not really done anything about it except update its maps. At the same time, the Bruges wool brokers’ traditional monopoly on wool importation from England was being threatened by English King, “Factory Direct” Edward I, who was trying to bypass the Flemish merchants. The Flemish appealed to French King Philip the Fair to protect their monopoly. The French crown responded by garrisoning troops in Bruges and suppressing the wool guilds.
Had they known there is nothing to do in Bruges, the soldiers might not have come.
Objecting to being kicked out of their homes, a band of local militia crept back into town on the night of May 18th, 1302 and slaughtered the French soldiers in their beds. To identify the occupying French (everyone looked the same in their stocking caps and English-wool onesies), the militia asked their victims to pronounce a phrase very difficult for the French to say: “schild en vriend” which means “shield and friend.” Only the leader of the French garrison (who was a big Rosetta Stone user) and a handful of others escaped with their lives. A few native Flemmish who slept with retainers in their mouths were also killed accidentally.
As could be expected, the French were upset. France was an imposing continental power, and things like this just didn’t happen to the glorious French military (not yet anyway). King Philip sent 8,000 professional knights, infantry and crossbowmen into Flanders to punish the uppity wool merchants. The Flemmings (yes, that is a correct name for them) brought out 3,000 men-at-arms from Bruges and another 5,500 from farther afield. Despite being armed mainly with pointy sticks called Goedendag, the Flemmings made excellent tactical decisions. They met the French in a field littered with trees, steams and ditches, making life difficult for the well-armored, and extremely heavy, French cavalry.
The two sides clashed on July 11th, 1302. The French infantry was on the verge of breaking the Flemmings when the French commander Robert of Artois called them back so the cavalry could sweep in and claim victory (the infantry needed one more win to trigger an expensive vesting option in their contract for 1303). French servants had been filling the streams and ditches with wood to help support the knights, but Robert did not wait for them to finish. He sent the cavalry forward. The knights were slaughtered by the mobile Flemmish infantry as the heavy horses and soldiers sank into the marshy ground.
My trusty cheval Jean-Luc-The-Horse and I are unstoppable! Now pull us out of this mud. Chop chop.
The battle turned into a rout, and the Flemmish pursued the French over ten kilometers. Not in the mood to deal with captives, the Flemmish killed a lot of extremely high-ranking French officers and noblemen, including Robert of Artois and the French-appointed Governor of Flanders. At least a thousand French knights were killed, from whom the Flemmish gathered golden spurs as trophies of their victory (and tons of xp). Those spurs gave the battle its name.
