THE SCENE: In the passage below, a Scottish king successfully provokes his noblemen into going to war by dressing up as an angel using a cloak made out of fish-scales.
THE TEXT: So the king, seeing that he was making no progress either by wheedling or harsh exhortations, decided to employ some cunning. For he remembered that they had not altogether declined the expedition but had shown some indecision when they said that, even if an angel ordered them to set out for the kingdom of the Picts, they would perhaps not obey.
He immediately worked out a stratagem in his mind and revealed the answers of the magnates in secret to a certain skilled craftsman, who was a great favorite of his, and informed him how to carry out the whole scheme. Since the man was a clever craftsman he gladly supported the king’s wishes, promising moreover that everything would be faithfully accomplished to the best of his ability. So he carefully took some scaly fish skins which shine with a kind of brilliance in the darkness of night and used them cunningly to adorn a cloak which sparkled as if with the shining feathers of angels. He put it on so that it completely covered the appearance of his whole body.
Clad in this kind of garment, he secretly entered the magnates’ bedrooms by night in the form of an angel and amazingly deluded their sense or rather their understanding, wide-awake as they were. Exhorting them in the name of the living God, he ordered them to obey all their king’s commands and in particular not to quail at the prospect of destroying the kingdoms of the Picts. The magnates, taken in by such cunning ingenuity, hastily approached their lord the king and promised their obedience in all matters. “For”, they said, “You Majesty, we have seen beyond a shadow of a doubt an angel of God face to face, and he warned us to follow you wherever you offered to go.” Their chamberlain of their own accord swearing a great oath also bore witness to this. And the king on oath to them let it be known that he himself had heard and seen the same thing through that angel.
– Scotichronicon, Walter Bower, 15th Century AD
