War, what is it good for?

[bibliogramma]

Standard of Honor, Jack Whyte

This, the second volume of Whyte's Templar trilogy, is a most unusual novel.

Despite its 800-plus pages, there's really not much action on the part of the characters. OK, one of the main characters - Alexander Sinclair, Knight of the Temple and secretly a brother of the hidden Order of Sion, survives the battle of the Horns of Hattin at the very beginning, and the other main character, his young cousin André St. Clair, also a brother of the Order of Sion travels from his home in Poitou to the holy Land, becoming a Templar along the way, and ends up witnessing the battle of Arsuf in which Richard Lion-Heart defeated Saladin's army.

But almost all of those 800-plus pages is exposition, description and discussion. We learn a great deal about a great many things: the politics of England, Europe and the Middle East, how to train an army in the use of arbalests and crossbows, how to move a force of 100,000 men from Burgundy to Acre, the personal life of Richard Lion-Heart, and a general picture of the life of a European fighting man in the 12th century. Most of the characters, both major and minor, have a penchant for talking about the political, religious, and moral issues of their time, so we hear a variety of perspectives on such things - some of the most interesting from the viewpoint of Alec Sinclair who has spent much time living among the Arabs of Palestine and has come to see them as humans, rather than heretical demons, with a culture that in some ways is more advanced than that of Europe at the time.

Whyte is a sufficiently good writer, and he weaves these deep conversations so seamlessly into the narrative thread, making them a part of the evolution of young André St. Clair, that all of this talking doesn't stand out - it really isn't until the end that one realises that while not a lot has happened to the characters onscreen, as it were (certainly they are all working very hard, training, marching, sailing, fighting, waiting out sieges and so on during the whole time), one is left with a deep and rich portrait of the Third Crusade itself and the world in which it took place.

One is also treated to a series of very critical discussions of the negative impact of religion, the corruption of power and the horror of war, views which are quite modern in tone but which can be anachronistically voiced by his main characters because of their initiation into the traditions and philosophies of Whyte's mythical secret society, which has matured well beyond its Jewish origins, and because of Alec Sinclair's disillusionment with both Christian and Muslim "men of God" as a result of his time spent among all of the religious factions at play in Palestine of the time - Roman and Orthodox Christians, Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

It is difficult in these days to read a book that discusses the Crusader experience, the varieties of religious intolerance, and war in Palestine without thinking of recent events in the Middle East and Central Asia, and I personally found it quite relevant to read a book that, despite being on the surface a novel about a mythical society behind the Tamplars, provided a very clear and balanced overview of another time when powers identifying themselves as Christian and Muslim were at war and religion was the ground and standard in that war.

Near the end of the book, André St. Clair addresses the grave in which he has buried his cousin Alec Sinclair and his cousin's friend, Amir al-Farouche, both dead in the battle at Arsuf, just outside Jerusalem:

... And both of you have died in war, fighting against each other for possession of this sacred place, And for what? For honor? Whose honor? Certainly, not God's, or Allah's, or Jehovah's, for the very thought of that is blasphemy. God has no need of man, and honor is a human attribute. for whose honor, then, are these wars waged? And how can there be honor in slaughtering people for the possession of a sacred place?

I can answer that for both of you. There is no honor in this war. There is no honor among kings and princes, popes and patriarchs, caliphs and viziers or whatever else you wish to name as titles. All of those are men, and all of them are venal, greedy, gross and driven by base lusts for power. Ours is the task of fighting for their lusts, and like poor fools, we do it gladly, time and time again, answering the call to duty and lining up to die unnoticed by the very people who sent us out there.