Sport at War: Nithard’s Strasbourg Cavalry Games of 842

The Strasbourg cavalry games of 842 were played after the more famous Strasbourg Oaths by the combined armies of King Charles the Bald (d.877) and King Louis the German (d.876). This episode shows the multipurpose value of one instance of early medieval sporting and military exercise. It has long been recognized that these games provided a chance to train and practice legitimate martial skills, but the overall value of the games was much more in addition to that. They were also a chance for kings and commanders to boost sagging morale among the soldiers, which was desperately needed in the wake of the bloody battle of Fontenoy in 841. Additionally, they were an expression of traditional Frankish cultural values, as a display of martial prowess and horsemanship, for which the Franks were particularly known and upon which they prided themselves. This provided a firm example of the ties that bound the increasingly divided empire within the present army, whose troops were drawn from all over Carolingian Europe. The games constituted a key morale component to ensure that the armies remained loyal and in the field to finish out the remainder of the Carolingian civil war, which ended formally with the Treaty of Verdun in 843.