Pierre Terrail, lord of Bayard (1473-1524) was a champion of France during the Italian Wars. He impressed pretty much everyone who ever met him, and earned the epithet
le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche (the knight without fear and without reproach). One of his exploits was holding a town which was considered indefensible, with a force of 1000 men against a besieging force of 35,000; after six weeks, the attackers gave up.
I suspect there is more to that story - one suspects the short description omits some key factor like a geographic obstacle, a large wall, or some such thing.
ReplyDeleteIf so, we have to give some credit for his figuring out a way to make use of terrain which others had declared indefensible.
ReplyDeleteThe other option is to assume those others were idiots. Some times all you have to do to shine is be marginally competent in a very shallow pool of competent people.
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