ABSTRACT
War in tenth-century France deserves a rethink in light of recent anthropological work on feud. Hostility between knights in the tenth century was less focused on avenging murders than on reclaiming castles and land. The Histories of Richer of Rheims communicate more explicitly about the discourses and ideas of avenging honor. By failing to even mention violence done to peasants, this type of verbal formula euphemized indirect vengeance and constituted the creation of downright symbolic violence that was at the heart of the feudal war, even as early as the code of Charroux in 989. The authors run the risk then that they simply encounter nonexistent vengeance in Flodoard and invented vengeance in Richer. Richer reconstructed a dialogue between Odo's messenger and the castellan, in which the latter gave his account. Vassalic campaigns to pillage peasants, besieged castles, the betrayal of those fallen in the castles these events recurred each year, much more frequently than did formal battles.
