ABSTRACT
Both in the realm of political thought and in the exercise of power, the Middle Ages was increasingly aware of the painful problem of the relations between the armed forces and society. This chapter reviews some aspects of these relations during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mainly within the territorial confines of France. The model proposed here is one of solidarity and complementarity, of the harmonious action of the different members of what late medieval thinkers called the 'mystical body' of the kingdom. If one were to follow the logic of this model or image, then there should not be the governed on one side, and the holders of power imposing their domination on the other. Rather, the soldiery, in the shape of the nobility, a social group that was perfectly accepted, were considered an intrinsic part of the body social, and were held to belong to it as one of its organic components.
