I’ve read a few of Bernard Cornwell’s historical and quasi-historical novels over the years, and The Archer’s Tale (originally published as Harlequin in Britain) is like most of the rest – only more so. The setting in this case is the campaign that led to the Battle of Crécy: Cornwell has a certain fascination with the barbaric and a steady determination throughout his work to show the horrors of war, and this gives him plenty to work with.
Historically, an initially successful English campaign in Gascony was eventually beaten down by a French army. English efforts in northern France had been less successful, and when Edward III landed personally in Normandy his objectives too were rebuffed by French positioning. When Edward attempted to withdraw to other lands he held securely, the French set off to chase him down, doing so successfully – but Crécy itself was a disaster for the French due to careful English positioning, poor French strategy, and the longbow used to maximum effect. Meanwhile, the French army in Gascony had been ordered to assist against Edward, but would never make it to the battle, and the English would re-establish their position in Gascony as a result. The French could hardly have squandered a dominant strategic position more effectively if that had been their goal.
Our hero Thomas joins the army for revenge after a French raid burned his village – besides which he gets saddled with a putatively mystical quest reminiscent of H. Rider Haggard. With a minimum of fiddling with implausibilities, Cornwell gets him both through the Gascony campaign and up through France to catch up with Edward’s army before Crécy.
As I mentioned, Cornwell’s narration is even grimmer in this book than in many of his other novels. I think from his afterword this is due to his taking out his disappointments with history on the novel. He admits to expecting a chivalric war when he began his research, but the chief French strategy was scorched earth to keep the English from moving freely. Meanwhile, the chief English strategy was the chevauchée – literally “cavalry charge”, a euphemism if there ever was one, as while forces were mounted for speed, the method amounted to rape, pillage, and burn, and might have been considered extreme by Sherman four hundred years later.
The book has its moments, but doesn’t amount to a unified whole: Cornwell tried, I think, to do too much with it. There is a hint of conflicts of conscience in Thomas over his varying goals, but the note feels forced – and Cornwell seems to use it either to force the plot along or resolve conflicts too easily with things that would happen anyway. The Archer’s Tale is a stand-alone work, but is also the first in a series continuing with Vagabond and Heretic. Whether Cornwell meant to write a series to begin with or just picked up the loose threads he’d left afterwards I don’t know.
It’s probably worth reading some of Cornwell’s stuff if you’ve got the time, but I’d give this one a pass unless you’ve got a lot of time. I’ve never read any of what is apparently Cornwell’s best-known series, the Richard Sharpe novels, but I’d guess they might be the best-known because they’re the best. (Or because they got made into a TV series. Or both.) His Arthurian series starting with The Winter King is quite decent too, while his novels set around Alfred the Great are on the less-good end. And then he’s written a bunch of other stuff I’ve never read too.
Romance of Victory 