Welsh Journals

be controlled, and offers a very great deal of valuable, if sometimes rather fragmentary, evidence in the process. M. Contamine's armies rarely fight -his purpose is only to show how they were raised, paid and controlled, and from what areas and social groups the soldiery came. There is thus much interesting material on the adaptability of the French noblesse to changes in military organisation at this time. His general conclusion emerges from the mass of evidence which he has sifted: French society, by the end of the fifteenth century, had been 'de-militarised' as a result of the creation of a more strictly defined, and contained, group of professional soldiers. Unlike earlier medieval societies, its armies were not composed of the nation in arms. The French monarchy, he argues, had by this date achieved a degree of control over its own troops which other monarchies envied. But the tensions created by the very existence of a standing army in France are perhaps played down a little in this book. A permanent army was billeted on a monarchy's subjects, and the unwelcome contact with the civilian population which this created could, and did, lead to crime and disorder. The case for an alleviation of the burdens imposed by the war with the English, after that war effectively ended in 1453, remains unproven. Taxation for its upkeep, a high level of military crime, and a certain unreliability-witness the events of 1465-may have made many Frenchmen less confident than M. Contamine in the fact that the army was a 'lesser evil' than the allegedly 'ruinous anarchy of the previous epoch' (p. 546.) Disbandment would, after all, have been equally ruinous in its effects, and it was perhaps this that led so many Frenchmen to accept the fact that the standing army had come to stay. Students of Welsh history may be interested in the accounts of the careers of two Welsh captains who served the French crown between 1350 and 1384­Owen of Wales (Owain Lawgoch, d. 1378) and John Wyn. The latter, known as the poursuivant d'amours, was so enamoured of the kingdom of France that, according to Froissart, he turned French and left the service of Edward III. But his defection may not have been entirely unrelated to that 'great profit' which he gained from Charles V of France as a result (p. 592.) The book's thirteen appendices, where this kind of information is set out, should not be neglected. It is also illustrated by maps, and a selection of plates showing the seals, signatures, castles and tombs of some of the captains about whom M. Contamine writes so learnedly. Although there are a number of errors by its Hungarian printers, this book seems very cheap, given its lavish nature, at its present price. M. G. A. VALE York. THE LOYAL CONSPIRACY: THE LORDS APPELLANT UNDER RICHARD II. By Anthony Goodman, London, Routledge, 1971. Pp. xi, 212. £ 2.50. Dr. Goodman states in the Introduction to his useful and interesting book that his purpose is 'to provide biographies of five English noblemen who flourished in the reign of Richard II and who are known from the