5 - Disguises

Summary

Disguises are a universal story-telling device, from superhero comic books to comic opera. They also have a long history in warfare, from camouflage pattern on modern uniforms to the inflatable ‘dummy’ vehicles deployed by Allied forces during the Second World War. It is therefore unsurprising to find a variety of tales involving disguise in medieval chronicles. While the most of these disguises are visual (e.g. dressing up as somebody else), there is also an important verbal and performative element.

These incidents have been divided into categories according to their intended effect: to make a combatant appear to be some kind of noncombatant, to make a fighting force appear larger than it truly was and to make one combatant look like another, be that friend or foe. This will require a detailed discussion of how medieval combatants distinguished these categories in the first place and how they expected to recognise one another on the battlefield. Many of these disguises reveal important cultural assumptions about the visual markers that distinguished fighting men from other social groups in the central Middle Ages.

Escaping and Infiltrating Strongholds

One way of avoiding an enemy's attention was to look like someone (or something) harmless and beneath their notice. This left the deceiver free to escape from danger or to enter a stronghold or enemy camp unnoticed.

A disguise could be useful if one wished to escape from one's enemy after a major defeat. According to Robert the Monk, the Turkish governor of Antioch, Yāghī Siyān, fled the city in June 1098 ‘covered in cheap rags’ (vilibus pannis obsitus) when he learned that the crusaders had seized the outer defences, probably attempting to pass himself off as a pauper or beggar. Unfortunately for him, he was recognised on the road by a band of Armenians, who killed him and presented his head to the crusaders. While chivalric convention in the West offered a level of protection to a defeated nobleman, who could expect to be spared in return for a ransom, this was not guaranteed. Furthermore, ransoms could be cripplingly expensive, so it is no wonder that chroniclers occasionally reported that individuals evaded capture by adopting a disguise.