ABSTRACT
French aristocrats clung tightly to norms that legitimated their right to use violence in their own causes, whether or not there was a war on. Characterized by one scholar as the first of the great war reporters, Jean Froissart sought to immortalize great deeds of arms and chivalry performed in the great conflict between France and England that took up most of his lifetime. Froissart borrowed from or adapted the work of others, particularly the knight Jean Le Bel, also from Hainault, on whose account of the early part of the war he relied heavily. In the fall of 1337, Edward III of England renounced his homage to Philip VI of France and declared war. Underneath the talk of war, and of chivalry and the law of arms, Froissart mentions some rather familiar looking violence, that is, homicides and guerrae. The private urge to violence was well on its way towards being co-opted by the institutions of public justice.
