ABSTRACT
Modern military historians have become increasingly interested in the combat experience of soldiers. Studying the actions and emotions of those directly engaged in the face of battle offers a crucial supplement to information gathered from the lofty and potentially distant perspective of those in command, and importantly mitigates the risk of underestimating the brutal horror of war. Military veterans may struggle to process and to articulate the horrors and realities of war, especially to those who have not shared their experiences. First-person accounts of war and the battlefield are very rare survivals from the Middle Ages. The nearest medieval counterpart to the modern military memoir are the biographies of aristocratic commanders, usually written by a companion-in-arms. The biography was a carefully constructed defence of the actions of Boucicaut and his circle, artfully and manipulatively employing a range of techniques including the rhetoric of emotions to target a specific courtly audience.
