I. The Historian's Craft

This book was left uncompleted (around section three) because of Marc Bloch's capture by the Gestapo and later torture and execution. The original outline included:

1. Historical Knowledge: Past and Present

2. Historical Observation

3. Historical Analysis

4. Time and History

5. Historical Experience

6. Explanation in History

7. The Problem of Prevision

Conclusion: The Role of History in Citizenship and Education

Appendix: The Teaching of History

Some excerpts:

"We have called history the 'science of men.' That is still far too vague. It is necessary to add: of men in time."

"When all is said and done, a single word, 'understanding,' is the beacon of our studies. Let us not say that the true historian is a stranger to emotion: he has that, at all events. . . .If history would only renounce its false archangelic airs, it would help us to cure this weakness. It includes a vast experience of human diversities, a continuous contact with men. Life, like science, has everything to gain. . ."

Relating to Historical Evidence:

To sum it all up in a word, the vocabulary of documents is, in its way, only another form of evidence. it is, no doubt, an extremely valuable one, but, like all evidences, imperfect and hence subject to criticism. Each significant term, each characteristic turn of style becomes a true component of knowledge-but not until it has been placed in its context, related to the usage of the epoch, of the society or of the author; and above all, if it is a survival of ancient date, secured from the ever-present danger of an anachronistic misinterpretation. Royal unction in the twelfth century was treated as a sacrament, and the term "sacrament" was assuredly fraught with significance, but it lacked, at that time, the far greater weight which theology would assign to it today, having become more inflexible in its definitions and, consequently, in its vocabulary. The advent of the name is always a great event even though the thing named has preceded it; for it signifies the decisive moment of conscious awareness. What a forward stride was taken the day the initiates of a new faith first called themselves Christians! Certain of our elders like Fustel de Coulanges, have given us admirable examples of this study of meanings, of this "historical semantics." Since their time, the progress of linguistics has further sharpened the tool. May young scholars never grow weary of handling it and, especially, of extending its use into the most recent times, which, in this regard, are much the least well explored.

Certainly, in spite of everything, the names, however imperfect their over-all accuracy, have far too strong a grip upon reality ever to permit us to describe a society without making a considerable use of its words, duly explained and interpreted. We shall not imitate those everlasting translators of the Middle Ages. We shall say "counts" where it is a question of counts, and "consuls" where ancient Rome is the setting. Great progress was made in the understanding of Hellenic religions as soon as Zeus had definitely banished Jupiter from the lips of scholars. But this practice is particularly applicable to institutional, technological, or religious detail. To consider that the nomenclature of the documents was perfectly capable of determining our own would, in short, be tantamount to admitting that they had provided us with a ready-made analysis. Were that the case, history would have little left to do. Happily, for our sake, it is not. That is why we are forced to seek elsewhere for the broad framework of our classification.

To provide it, we already have at our disposal a whole lexicon which seeks to transcend the connotations of any particular period..Elaborated without predetermined plan by the successive modifications of several generations of historians, it brings together elements of very diverse date and origin. "Feudal" and "feudalism" were originally legal jargon, taken over from the courts of the eighteenth century by Boulain Villiers, and then by Montesquieu, to become the rather awkward labels for a type of social structure

II. Excerpts from French Rural History

The Age of Large-scale Land Clearance
Around the year 1050-in some favoured regions such as Normandy and Flanders perhaps a little earlier, in others somewhat later-a new era dawned, which was to last until the late thirteenth century. This was the period of large-scale land clearances, and to all appearance it saw the most considerable additions to the total area of land under cultivation in this country since prehistoric times. Man's most formidable obstacle was the forests, and it was in the forests that his efforts bore most obvious fruit. The trees had for centuries halted the progress of the plough. Neolithic farmers, who probably enjoyed a drier climate than our own, set their villages in expanses of grassland, scrubland, heathland and steppe; the primitive implements at their disposal would have been inadequate for the task of deforestation. In Roman and Frankish times the efforts of woodsmen were apparently more successful. In the early ninth century for example, -when Tancred needed land for his completely new village of Le Nocle, he took it from dense forest, de densitate silvarum." But even where there were no cultivated clearings, these forests of the early Middle Ages, the ancient forests of France, were by no means unexploited or empty of men.

The forest had its own population, often highly suspect in the eyes of more sedentary folk, who roamed about the woods or lived in shacks they built themselves: huntsmen, charcoal burners, blacksmiths, gatherers of wax and wild honey (described in the texts as bigres), dealers in wood-ash, which was important in the manufacture of glass and soap, and barkstrippers, whose wares were used for tanning hides or could be plaited to make cords. At the end of the twelfth century the lady of Valois employed four servants in her woods at Viry: one was. an assarter (this was when land clearance was just beginning), one a trapper, a third an archer and the last an 'ash-man'. Hunting in the shady forest was not merely a pleasant sport; it also produced hides for urban and seigneurial tanneries and for the binderies of monastic libraries; it supplied meat for everyone, including fighting-men-in 1269 Alphonse de Poitiers ordered the slaughter of a large number of wild boars from his great forests in the Auvergne, to provide salted carcasses for taking overseas on his projected crusade. In an age when the primeval instinct of foraging was nearer the surface than it is today, the forest had greater riches to offer than we perhaps appreciate. People naturally went there for wood, a far greater necessity of life than in this age of oil, petrol and metal; wood was used for heating and lighting (in torches), for building material (roof slats, castle palisades), for footwear (sabots), for plough handles and various other implements, and as faggots for strengthening roadways. There was also a demand for a wide variety of vegetable products, for mosses or dried leaves as bedding, for beechmast on account of the oil, for wild hops and the tart fruit of wild trees-apple, pear, cherry and plum-as also for some of the trees themselves (pear and apple), which were dug up to be used as orchard grafts. But the principal economic contribution of the forest was in a role we no longer demand of it: the presence of fresh leaves young shoots, grass in the undergrowth, acorns and beechmast made it a first-rate grazing ground. For centuries, in the absence of any standard measurement, the commonest way of indicating the size of a stretch of forest was by reference to the number of pigs it could sustain. Neighbouring villagers sent their cattle into the forest, great lords kept vast herds there and even set up stud-farms for their horses. These hordes of animals lived almost in a state of nature, and the habit died hard; even in the sixteenth century, the squire of Gouberville in Normandy had to take to the woods at certain times of the year to round up his stock, and could fail to find them all at one fell swoop. Once he met only the bull 'who was limping', 'whom no-one had seen for two months past'; on another day his servants managed to catch 'the wild mares ... whom for two years none had contrived to take'.''.

As a result of this relatively intensive and quite unregulated exploitation the ranks of the trees became progressively thinner. Bark-stripping alone must have accounted for many a fine oak. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, despite the obstructions offered by dead tree-trunks and some remaining thickets where penetration was difficult, there were already places where the woodland was sparse. . .

III. Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence

We dared not stand up in the public and be the voice crying in the wilderness. It might have been just that, but at least we should have had the consolation of knowing that, whatever the outcome of its message, it had at least spoke aloud the faith that was in us. We preferred to lock ourselves into the fear-haunted tranquility of our studies. May the young men forgive us the blood that is red upon our hands!