Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare's parlance 'the dogs of war') to pillage and chaos.

The Black Book of the Admiralty, 1385 is a collection of laws in French and Latin that relate to the organisation of the English Navy. In the 'Ordinances of War of Richard II' in that book we find:

"Item, qe nul soit si hardy de crier havok sur peine davoir la test coupe."

An English text which comes nearer to defining the term is found in Grose's Military Antiquities Respecting a History of the English Army, 1801. Grose was quoting a translation of an Old French text by Thomas De Brotherton, the first Earl of Norfolk (Brotherton died in 1338):

"Likewise be all manner of beasts, when they be brought into the field and cried havoke, then every man to take his part."


(used Coriolanus now on Julius Caesar)