Knights and their days

The word Pieces reminds me of a curious theatrical illustration of Macedonian chivalry. When Barry used to play Alexander the Great, he made a grand spectacle of his chariot entry. But it was highly absurd, nevertheless. When he descended from the vehicle, his attendant knights, bareheaded and unarmed, placed their hands upon it, and in an instant it went to pieces, like a trick in a pantomime, and left in every warrior’s possession, swords, javelins, shields, and helmets, supplied by the spokes of the wheels, the poles, the body of the car and its ornaments. This feat was very highly applauded by our intellectual sires.

This act, however, was hardly more unnatural than the sayings of some real chevaliers, particularly those of Spain.

Among the Spanish Rhodomontades chronicled by Brantome, we find none that have not reference to personal valor. There is the choleric swordsman who walks the street without his weapon, for the good reason that his hand is so ready to fly to his sword, if the wind but blow on him too roughly, he is never able to walk out armed without taking two or three lives. “I will hoist you so high,” says another Spanish cavalier to his antagonist, “that you will die before you can reach the earth again.” It was a fellow of the same kidney who used not only to decapitate dozens of Moorish heads every morning, but was wont afterward to fling them so high into the air, that they were half-devoured by flies before they came down again. Another, boasting of his feats in a naval battle, quietly remarked, that making a thrust downward with his sword, it passed through the sea, penetrated the infernal region, and sliced off a portion of the moustache of Pluto! “If that man be a friend of yours,” said a cavalier to a companion, referring at the same time to a swordsman with whom the cavalier had had angry words, “pray for his soul, for he has quarrelled with me.” The self-complacency also of the following is not amiss. A Spanish captain in Paris, saw the haughty chevalier d’Ambres pass by him. “Is he,” said the Spaniard, “as valiant as he is proud?” The reply was in the affirmative. “Then,” remarked the Iberian, “he is almost as good a man as myself.” We hear of another, less gallant, perhaps, than brave, who made it a great favor to ladies when he put off a combat at their request, and passed a pleasant hour with them, in place of knocking out brains upon the field. It was a knight of similar notions who cudgelled his page for boasting of the knight’s valor. “If thou dost such foolish things, Sir Knave,” said the doughty gentleman, “the whole female sex will perish of love for me, and I shall have no leisure left to take towns and rout armies.” This was a full-developed knight. It was probably his youthful squire who remarked, when some one expressed surprise that one so young had mustaches of such unusual length. “They sprung up,” said the young soldier, “under the smoke of cannon; they grew thus quickly under the same influences.”

Some of the old Spanish cavaliers used to maintain that their very beauty dazzled their enemies. However this may have been, it is a fact that the beauty of Galeozo Maria, Duke of Milan, was sufficiently striking to save him for a while, against the daggers of conspirators. One of these, named Lampugnano, longed to slay him, but did not dare. He was, nevertheless, resolved; and he employed a singular means for giving himself courage. He procured a faithful portrait of the handsome duke, and every time he passed it, he looked steadfastly at the brilliant eyes, and graceful features, and then plunged his dagger into the canvass. He continued this practice until he found himself enabled to look the living duke in the face without being dazzled by his beauty; and this done, he dealt his blow steadily, and destroyed his great and graceful foe.

It has often been asserted that there have been few cavaliers who have carried on war with more indifference and cruelty than the Spanish knights. But war in all times and in all ages has induced the first, at least, if not the last. I may cite among what may be called the more recent instances, one that would hardly have occurred, even at Sebastopol. It is in reference to Schomberg’s army at Dundalk. “The survivors,” says Leland, “used the bodies of their dead comrades for seats or shelter; and when these were carried to interment, murmured at being deprived of their conveniences.” While touching upon Irish matters, I will avail myself of the opportunity to notice that Irish knights were sometimes called “iron knee,” “eagle knee,” and “black knee,” from the armor which was especially needed for that part of the body, the Irish with their dreadful battle-axes making the sorest stroke on the thigh of the horseman. The Irish appellation of the White Knight, was given to the heir of a family wherein gray hairs were hereditary. The Irish knights, it may be observed, were generally more religious than the Spanish. The latter were too ready to ascribe every success to their own might, and not to a greater hand. Even in the case of St. Lawrence, calmly roasting to death on his gridiron, the proud Spaniards would not have this patience ascribed to the grace of God, but only to the true Spanish valor. While speaking of the burning of St. Lawrence, I will add that St. Pierre quotes Plutarch in stating, that when the Roman burners had to reduce to ashes the bodies of several knights and ladies, they used to place one female body among eight or ten males, fancying that with this amalgamation they would burn better. The author of the “Harmonies of Nature” makes upon this the truly characteristic comment, that the Roman fashion was founded on the notion, that “the fire of love still burned within us after death.”

Reverting, for a moment, to the Spaniards, I may notice a fashion among them which is worth mentioning. When a Spanish cavalier entered the presence of a Spanish queen, accompanied by his lady, he did not unbonnet to his sovereign. He was supposed to be so engrossed by his mistress as to forget even the courtesies of loyalty.

Brantome, on the other hand, notices kingly courtesy toward a subject. When describing the battle-acts of the famous M. de Thorannes, he states that the King in acknowledgment that the battle of Rentz had been gained chiefly through his courage, took the collar of his own order from his neck, and placed it on that of the gallant soldier. This was a most unusual act, according to the showing of Brantome, but probably not the first time of a similar occurrence. The author just named complains in piteous terms that, in his time and previously, the honors of chivalry had been bestowed for anything but knightly deeds. They were gained by favor, influence, or money. Some set their wives to exert their fascination over the Christian sovereign, and purchase the honor at any cost. M. de Chateaubriand gave a house and an estate for the order of St. Michael. Ultimately, it was conferred on single captains of infantry, to the great disgust of the better-born gentlemen who had paid dearly for the honor. Brantome declares that he knew many who had never been half a dozen leagues from their houses, who wore the insignia of the order, and who talked of the taking of Loches, as if they had really been present. He angrily adds, that even lawyers were made knights, stripping themselves of their gowns, and clapping swords on their thighs. He appears especially annoyed that the celebrated Montaigne should have followed a similar example: and he adds with a malicious exultation, that the sword did not become him half so well as the pen.

One French Marquis was persecuted by his neighbors to get orders for them, as if they were applying for orders for the theatre. He obtained them with such facility, that he even made a knight of his house-steward, and forced the poor man to go to market in his collar, to the infinite wounding of his modesty. It was, however, one rule of the order that the collar should never, under any pretence whatever, be taken from the neck. The Court had very unsavory names for these mushroom-knights; and Brantome gives us some idea of the aristocratic feeling when he recounts, with a horror he does not seek to disguise, that the order was sold to an old Huguenot gentleman, for the small sum of five hundred crowns. A cheap bargain for the new knight, seeing that membership in the order carried with it exemption from taxation. Luckily for the Huguenot he died just in time to save himself from being disgraced. Some gentlemanly ruffians had agreed to attack this “homme de peu,” as Brantome calls him, to pull the order from his neck, to give him a cudgelling, and to threaten him with another, whenever he dared to wear the knightly insignia.

Brantome wonders the more at what he calls the abuse of the order as it had been instituted by Louis XI., on the ground that the old order of the Star founded by King John, in memory of the star which guided the Kings to the Cradle of Divinity, had become so common, that the silver star of the order was to be seen in the hat and on the mantle of half the men in France. Louis XI., in abolishing the order, conferred its insignia as an ornament of dress, upon the Chevaliers de Guet, or gentlemen of the watch, who looked to the safety of Paris when the stars were shining, or that it was the hour for them to do so. It was an understood thing with all these orders that if a knight went into the service of an enemy to the sovereign head of the order, the knight was bound to divest himself of the insignia and transmit the same directly to the King.

Before the dignity of the order was humbled, the members took pride in displaying it even in battle; although they were put to high ransom, if captured. Some prudent knights, of as much discretion as valor, would occasionally conceal the insignia before going into fight; but they were mercilessly ridiculed, when the absence of the decoration testified to the presence of their discretion. In the earlier years of its formation, a man could with more facility obtain a nomination to be captain of the body-guard than the collar of the order of St. Michael. Louis XI. himself showed a wise reluctance to making the order common, and although he fixed the number of knights at six-and-thirty, he would only, at first, appoint fifteen. Under succeeding kings the order swelled to limitless numbers, until at last, no one would accept it, even when forced upon them. One great personage, indeed, sought and obtained it. He was severely rallied for his bad ambition; but as he remarked, the emblems of the order would look well, engraved upon his plate, and the embroidered mantle would make an admirable covering for his mule.

This sort of satire upon chivalry reminds me that a knight could unknight himself, when so inclined. An instance occurs in a case connected with Jeanne Darc. The chevaliers of the Dauphin’s army had no belief in the inspiration of the Maid of Orleans, until success crowned her early efforts. The female knight, if one may so speak, on the other hand, had no measure whatever of respect, either for knight or friar, who appeared to doubt her heavenly mission. I may just notice, by the way, that a “board” of seven theologians assembled to consider her claims, and examine the maiden herself. One of the members, a “brother Seguin,” a Limousin, who spoke with the strong and disagreeable accent of his birthplace, asked Jeanne in what sort of idiom she had been addressed by the divine voice, by which she professed to be guided: “In a much better idiom than you use yourself,” answered the pert young lady, “or I should have put no trust in it.” Here, by the way, we have, perhaps, the origin of the old story of the stammering gentleman who asked the boy if his m—m—magpie could speak? “Better than you,” said the boy, “or I would wring his neck off.” But to resume. Jeanne was quite as nonchalante to the knights, as she was flippant to the friars. She expressly exhibits this characteristic, in the first council held in her presence within Orleans, when she urged immediate offensive measures, contrary to the opinion of the knights themselves. One of the latter, the Sire de Gamache, was so chafed by the pertinacity of the Pucelle, that, at last, springing to his feet, he exclaimed:—“Since noble princes listen for a moment to the nonsense of a low-bred hussy like this, rather than to the arguments of a chevalier such as I am, I will not trouble myself to give any more opinions. In proper time and place, my good sword will speak, and perchance I may prevail; but the king and my honor so will it. Henceforward, I furl and pull down my banner; from this moment I am only a simple ’squire; but I would much rather have a noble man for master, than serve under a wench who, perhaps, has been a—one really does not know what!” and with these words, he rolled up his banner, placed the same in the hands of Dunois, and walked out of the tent, not Sir John de Gamache, but plain John Gamache, Esquire.

A curious result followed. The first attack on the bastion of Tourelles failed, and Jeanne was slightly wounded and unhorsed. Gamache was near, and he dismounted and offered her his steed. “Jump up,” cried the good fellow, “you are a gallant lass, and I was wrong in calling you ugly names. I will serve and obey you right willingly.” “And you,” said Jeanne, “are as hearty a knight as ever thwacked men or helped a maid.” And so were they reconciled, and remained good friends to the end;—which was not long in coming.

Knights, irregularly made so, were unknighted with little ceremony. Although each duly dubbed knight could confer the same honor on any deserving such distinction, it was necessary that the individual about to be so honored should be a gentleman. In France, if this rule was infringed, the unlucky knight had his spurs hacked off, on a dunghill. Occasionally the unknighted person was fined. It may be observed, however, that the king might make a knight of a villain, if the sovereign were so minded. That is, a king could raise any of his own subjects to the rank, if he thought proper. Not so with sovereigns and persons not their subjects. The Emperor Sigismund, for instance, when visiting Paris, in 1415, knighted a person who was below the rank of gentleman. The French people were indignant at this, as an act of sovereignty in another monarch’s dominions. If this chevalier was not unknighted, the reason, probably, was that the Emperor might not be offended. It is said, that in Naples it has never been necessary for a man to be noble, a gentleman in fact, in order to be a knight. This may readily be credited. In Naples the fact of a man being a brute beast does not incapacitate him from exercising the office even of a king.

After all, there appears to have been some uncertainty in the observance of the law on the subject. In England the custom which allowed knights to dub other knights, very soon fell into disuse, so that there are fewer examples of unknighting in this country than in France, where the custom prevailed down to the middle of the sixteenth century; and its abuses, of course, rendered the unmaking of illegally constituted knights, if not common, at least an occasional occurrence. Henry III., as I have said in another page, summoned tenants in capite to receive knighthood from himself, and authorized tenants of mesne lords to receive the honor from whom they pleased. But there must have been considerable disrating of these last distinguished persons, or such an abuse of creation, so to speak, that the privilege was stopped, except by special permission of the king. Some places, in France, however, declared that they held a prescriptive right for burgesses to receive knighthood at the hands of noblemen, without the royal permission. Hallam, quoting Villaret, says that burgesses, in the great commercial towns, were considered as of a superior class to the roturiers, and possessed a kind of demi-nobility.

Ridiculous as modern knights, whether of town or country, have been made upon the stage, it is indisputable that in some cases the ridicule has not been what painters call “loaded,” and the reality was in itself a caricature. I have read somewhere of one city gentleman, who was knighted during his shrievalty, and who forthwith emancipated himself a little from business, and aired his chivalrous “sir” in gay company. He was once, however, sorely puzzled on receiving a note of invitation from a lady whose soirées were the especial delight of her guests, and whose note ended with the initials, so absurdly placed at the termination of an invitation in English. R. S. V. P., “réponse, s’il vous plait.” The newly-coined knight, after allusions to the pressure of business, accepted the hospitality offered him through the note, remarking at the same time, that “all work and no play made Jack a dull boy,” and that he knew nothing more to his taste, after a long day’s application, than what her ladyship’s note appeared to present to him in the initials at its foot; namely, a Regular Small Vist Party. If this anecdote be not apocryphal, I suspect that the knight’s remark may have sprung less from ignorance than humor, and that his reading of the initials was meant as a censure upon an absurd fashion.

While speaking of city knights at home, and their humor, I will avail myself of the opportunity to give an instance of wit in a poor chevalier of the city of Paris, whose whole wealth consisted of a few unproductive acres near the capital, and whose son had just married a wealthy heiress of very low degree. “Il fait bien,” said the old knight, “il fume mes terres!”

This was hardly courteous; but elevated courtesy was never wanting among true knights, in the very rudest of times.

Strange contrasts of feeling were sometimes exhibited. Thus, when the English were besieging Orleans, they grew suddenly tired of their bloody work, on Christmas-day, and asked for a truce while they ate their pudding. The request was not only readily granted, but the French knights, hearing that the day was dull in the English camp, obtained the permission of the bastard Dunois, to send over some musicians to enliven the melancholy leaguers. The band played lustily during the whole period of the truce, but the last notes had scarcely ceased, and the “Godons” as Jeanne Darc rather corruptively called our great sires, who were too much addicted to swearing, had hardly ceased uttering their thanks for the musical entertainment, when their cannonade was renewed by the besiegers with such vigor, that the French knights swore—harmony had never before been paid in such hard coin.

There was little ill-feeling consequent upon this. The pages in either army were allowed to amuse themselves by slaying each other in a two days’ duel, presided over by the respective generals-in-chief. This was chivalrous proof that neither party bore malice, and they beat out each other’s brains on the occasion, in testimony of universal good-will, with as much delighted feeling as if they had all been Irishmen. A further proof of absence of individual rancor may be seen in the fact, that Suffolk sent a gift of pigs, dates, and raisins, for the dessert of Dunois; and the latter acknowledged the present by forwarding to the English general some fur for his robe—Suffolk having complained bitterly of the cold of that memorable February, 1429.

This reminds me of a similar interchange of courtesy between French and English antagonists, in later times. When brave Elliot was defending Gibraltar from gallant Crillon, the former, who never ate meat, suffered greatly (as did his scurvy-stricken men) from a scarcity of vegetables. Crillon had more than he wanted, and he sent of his superabundance, most liberally, to the foe whom he respected. A whole cart-load of carrots and compliments made general and garrison glad, and Elliot was as profuse in his gratitude as he was bound to be. It may be remembered that similar exchanges of courtesy and creature-comforts took place at Sebastopol. Sir Edmund Lyons sent Admiral Nachimoff a fat buck, a gift which the large-minded hero of the Sinope butchery repaid by a hard Dutch cheese. It may be said too that the buck would have been more appropriately sent to the half-starved English heroes who were rotting in the trenches.

There were some other naval knights of old, touching whom I may here say a word.

The history of the sea-kings or sea-knights, whose noble vocation it was to descend from the north with little but ballast in the holds of their vessels, and to return thither heavily laden with plunder and glory, is tolerably well known to the majority of readers. The story of the Flemish pirates, who, nearly eight centuries ago, carried terror to, and brought spoil from the Mediterranean, is far less familiar. This story is well illustrated in the “Biographie des hommes remarquables de la Flandres Occidentale,” of whom the authors are M. Octave Delepierre, the accomplished Belgian consul in this country, and Mr. Carton.

The period is a warm June evening of the year 1097. Off the coast of Cilicia, two large vessels, belonging to the Emperor Alexis Comnenus, and manned by Constantinopolitan Greeks, were surrounded and attacked by ten fast-sailing but small vessels, belonging to the dreaded “Greek Pirates,” whose name alone brought terror with the sound. On the prow of each light bark was a rudely sculptured figure of a lion; from the summit of the tall mast was displayed a green pennant, which was never hauled down, for the good reason that the pirates never attacked but where success seemed certain; and if defeat menaced them they could easily find safety in flight.

There was scarcely a place on the coast which they had not, for ten years past, visited; and many merchants purchased exemption from attack by paying a species of very liberal black mail. It was beneath the dignity of an emperor to buy safety from piratical rovers, and they had little respect for his vessels, in consequence.

M. Delepierre informs us that these Flemish pirates had been, originally, merchants, but that they thought it more profitable to steal than to barter; and found “skimming the seas,” as the phrase went, far more lucrative than living by the dull precepts of trade. Their three principal chiefs were Zegher of Bruges, Gheraert of Courtrai, and Wimer (whose name still lives in Wimereux) of Boulogne. The force they had under them amounted to four hundred intrepid men, who were at once sailors and soldiers, and who are described as being so skilful that they could with one hand steer the ship, and with the other wield the boarding-hatchet. It will be seen that our Laureate’s exhortation to knavish tradesmen to lay down their weights and their measures, and to mend their ways by taking to the vocation of arms, had here a practical illustration. In the present case, M. Delepierre suggests that the pirates were, probably, not less honest men than the Greeks. The latter were ostensibly on their way to succor the Crusaders, but Alexis was a double dealer, and occasionally despatched forces against the infidel, which forces turned aside to assault those Christian neighbors of his, who were too powerful to be pleasant in such a vicinity, and to get rid of whom was to be devoutly desired, and, at any cost, accomplished. The foreign policy of Alexis was as villanously void of principle as that of any government under a more advanced period of Christian civilization.

The Greek crews had been summoned to surrender. Gheraert of Courtrai had called to them to that effect through his leathern speaking-trumpet. He probably knew little of Greek, and the Orientals could not have comprehended his Flemish. We may conclude that his summons was in a macaronic sort of style; in which two languages were used to convey one idea. The Hellenes replied to it, however it may have sounded, by hurling at the Flemings a very hurricane of stones.

The stout men from Flanders were not long in answering in their turn. “They put into play,” says M. Delepierre, “their mechanical slings. These were large baskets full of stones fastened to the end of an elevated balance, the motion of which flung them to some distance. They had other means of destruction, in enormous engines, which hurled beams covered with iron, and monster arrows wrapped in flaming rosin. With scythe-blades attached to long poles, they severed the ropes and destroyed the sails, and then flinging out their grapnels they made off with their prize.”

To this point the present battle had not yet come. It had lasted an hour, the Greeks had suffered most by the means of attack above noticed; and they had inflicted but trifling injury, comparatively, upon the men of the green pennant. They refused, however, to surrender, but prepared to fly. Wimer saw the preparatory movement, and, in a loud voice, exclaimed:—“A dozen divers!”

Twelve men, quitting their posts, leaped over the side of the boat, carrying enormous tarières (augers) with them. They disappeared beneath the waves; appeared for a moment or two again above the surface, in order to draw breath; once more plunged downward; and, finally, at the end of ten minutes, climbed again into their small vessel, exclaiming, “Master, it is done!”

The twelve divers had established twelve formidable leaks in the larger of the two Greek vessels, and as it began to sink, the crew agreed to surrender. The Green Pirates seized all that was on board that and the other ship. In the latter, stripped of everything of value, they allowed the two Greek crews to sail away; and then proceeded toward the coast with their booty, consisting of rich stuffs, provisions and arms. There was far more than they needed for their own wants; and so, for the nonce, they turned traders again. They sold at a good price what they had unscrupulously stolen, and the profits realized by the Flemish rovers were enough to make all honest, but poor traders, desire to turn corsairs.

Zegher ascended the Cydnus, in order to pay a professional visit to Tarsis, and was not a little surprised, on approaching the city, to see formidable preparations made to resist him. On drawing closer, however, the pirate-leader found that Tarsis was in possession of the army of Flemish crusaders under the great Count Baldwin; and each party welcomed the other with joyous shouts of “Long live Flanders!” “Long live the Lion!” The arrival of the fleet was of the greatest advantage to the Flemings, who, though they had suffered less than the French, Italian, and German legions, by whom they had been preceded, and had been progressively triumphing since they had landed, needed succors both of men and material, and lo! here were the Green Pirates ready to furnish both, for a consideration. There was abundance of feasting that night, and a very heavy sermon in the morning.

Baldwin was himself the preacher. His style was a mixture of exhorting with the threatening; and he was so little complimentary as to tell the Green pirates that they were nothing better than brigands, and were undoubtedly on their way to the devil. He added that he would have treated them as people of such a character, going such a way, only that they were his countrymen. And then he wept at the very thought of their present demerits, and their possible destiny. This practice of weeping was inherited by knights from the old Greek heroes, and a chevalier in complete steel might shed tears till his suit was rusty, without the slightest shame. The exhortation continued without appearing to make any sensible impression upon the rovers. Baldwin, however, pointed his address at the end, with an observation that if they would join him in his career of arms, he would give them lands that should make lords of the whole of them. Upon this observation the Green Pirates, with a little modest allusion to their unworthiness, declared that they were eager, one and all, to turn crusaders.

Each man attached a small green cross, in cloth, to the top of his sleeve; and joyfully followed Baldwin to the field. The count was no more able to keep his word than a recruiting sergeant who promises a recruit that he shall be made a field-marshal. Nor was he to blame, for the greater part of his new allies perished; but enough were left to make a score of very doughty knights.

Admirable sailors were the Northmen, especially the Anglo-Normans, whether with respect to manœuvring or courage. “Close quarters” formed the condition on which they liked to be with an enemy. “Grapple and board” was their system as soon as they had created a little confusion among the enemy with their cross-bows and slings. The “mariners” in those days fought in armor, with heavy swords, spears, and battle-axes. They were well furnished too with bags of quick-lime, the contents of which they flung into the eyes of their adversaries, when they could get to windward of them, an end which they always had in view.

The first regular naval battle fought between the English and the French was conducted by the former after the fashion above mentioned. It was during the reign of Henry III., when Louis of France, by the destruction of his army at “the fair of Lincoln,” was shut up in London, and depended on the exertions of his wife, Blanche of Castile, for his release. Blanche sent eighty large ships, besides many smaller vessels, from Calais, under a piratical commander, the celebrated Eustace Le Moine. Hubert de Burgh had only forty vessels wherewith to proceed against this overwhelming force; and on board of these the English knights proceeded, under protest and with a world of grumbling, at being compelled to fight on the waters when they had no sea-legs, and were accustomed to no battles but those on land. No heed was taken of protest or grumbling; the forty vessels were loosened from their moorings, and away went the reluctant but strong-boned land sailors, all in shirts of mail in place of Guernsey jackets, to contend for the first time with a French fleet. The English ships contrived to get between Calais and the enemy’s vessels, and fell upon the latter in their rear. The English bowmen handled their favorite weapons with a deadly dexterity; and as soon as their vessels were made fast to those of the French, out flew the quick-lime, flung by the English, and carried by the wind into the faces of the French. While these were stamping with pain, screwing their eyes up to look through the lime-dust, or turning their backs to avoid it, the English boarders made a rush, cut down men, hacked away the rigging, and so utterly defeated the French, unaccustomed to this sort of fighting, that of the great French fleet only fifteen vessels escaped. The number of Gallic knights and inferior officers captured was very large. As for Eustace le Moine, he had slunk below to avoid the lime-powder and battle-axes. He was seized by Richard Fitzroy, King John’s illegitimate son. Fitzroy refused to give the recreant quarter, but hewed off his head on the taffrail, and sent it from town to town through England as a pleasant exhibition.

Errant knights in quest of adventure, and anxious to secure renown, less frequently visited England than other countries. They appear to have had a mortal dislike of the sea. This dislike was common to the bravest and greatest among them. I may cite, as an instance, the case of the Duke of Orleans and his cavaliers, captured at Agincourt, and brought over to England, from Calais to Dover, by the gallant and lucky Henry. The latter walked the deck during a heavy ground swell, with as much enjoyment as though he had been to the matter born. The French prince and his knights, on the other hand, were as ignorant of the sea and as uneasy upon it as a modern English Lord of the Admiralty. They suffered horribly, and one and all declared that they would rather be daily exposed to the peril of battle, than cross the straits of Dover once a month.

Nevertheless, stray knights did occasionally brave the dangers of the deep, and step ashore on the coast of Kent with a challenge to all comers of equal degree. We have an instance of this sort of adventurer in Jacques de Lelaing, whose story is told in this volume. We hear of another in the nameless knight of Aragon, who in the reign of Henry V. set all London and many a provincial baronial hall in commotion by his published invitation to all knights of the same rank as himself, to come and give him a taste of their quality in a bout at two-edged sword, axe, and dagger.

The challenge was promptly accepted by stout Sir Robert Cary. Sir Robert was a poor knight, with nothing to lose, for his sire had lost all he possessed before Sir Robert’s time, by being faithful to poor Richard II., a virtue, for the exercise of which he was punished by forfeiture of his estates, decreed against him by Henry IV. The disinherited knight, therefore, had a chance of winning land as well as honor, should he subdue the arrogant Aragonese. The two met in the then fashionable district of Smithfield, and the Devonshire swordsman, after a bloody and long-enduring fight, so thoroughly vanquished the Spaniard, that the king, who delighted in such encounters, and who was especially glad when victory was won by the side he most favored, not only restored to Sir Robert the forfeited paternal estates, but he also authorized him to wear the arms of the much-bruised knight from beyond sea.

At a later period knightly estates went in the service of another king. Sir Henry Cary risked life and property in the cause of Charles I., and while he preserved the first, he was deprived of nearly all the latter. The head of the family, no longer a knight, if I remember rightly, was residing at Torr Bay, when the Old Chevalier was about to attempt to regain the three crowns which, according to no less than a French archiepiscopal authority, James II. had been simple enough to lose for one mass. At this period, the English king that would be, sent the Duke of Ormond to the head of the Cary family, and not only conveyed to him an assurance that his services to the Stuarts had not been forgotten; but, by way of guarantee that future, and perhaps more than knightly honors should be heaped upon him, in case of victory declaring for the Stuart cause, the chevalier sent him the portraits of James II., and of that monarch’s wife, Mary of Modena. Similar portraits are to be found among the cherished treasures of many English families; and these are supposed to have been originally distributed among various families, as pledges from the giver, that for swords raised, money lost, or blood shed in the cause of the Stuarts, knighthood and honors more substantial should follow as soon as “the king” should “get his own again.”

To revert to Charles I., it may be added that he was not half so energetic in trying to keep his own as his grandson was in trying to recover what had been lost. An incident connected with the battle of Rowton Heath will serve to exemplify this. Never did king have better champion than Charles had on that day, in the able knight Sir Marmaduke Langdale. The knight in question had gained a marked advantage over his adversary, the equally able Poyntz. To cheer the king, then beleaguered in Chester Castle, with the news, Sir Marmaduke despatched Colonel Shakerley. He could not have commissioned a better man. The colonel contrived to get into Chester after crossing the Dee in a tub, which he worked with one hand, while he towed his horse after him with the other. He delivered his message, and offered to convey an answer or instructions back to Sir Marmaduke, and by the same means, in a quarter of an hour. The king hesitated; some sanction required for a certain course of action proposed by Sir Marmaduke was not given, and Poyntz recovered his lost ground, defeated the royal horse, and thus effectually prevented Charles from obtaining access to Scotland and Montrose.

I have given some illustrations of the means by which knighthood was occasionally gained: an amusing illustration remains to be told. Dangeau, in his memoirs, speaks of two French peeresses who lived chiefly upon asses’ milk, but who, nevertheless, became afflicted with some of the ills incident to humanity, and were ordered to take physic. They were disgusted with the prescription, but got over the difficulty charmingly by physicking the donkey. It was not an unusual thing in France for very great people to treat their vices as they did their ailments, by a vicarious treatment. Catherine de Medicis is one out of many instances of this. She was desirous of succeeding in some great attempt, and set down her failure to the account of her sins. She instantly declared that she would atone for the latter, provided her desires were accomplished, by finding a pilgrim who would go from France to Jerusalem, on foot, and who at every three steps he advanced should go back one. The wished-for success was achieved, and after some difficulty a pilgrim was found, strong enough, and sufficiently persevering to perform the pilgrimage. The royal pledge was redeemed, and there only remained to reward the pilgrim, who was a soldier from the neighborhood of Viterbo. Some say he was a merchant; but merchant or soldier, Catherine knighted, ennobled, and enriched him. His arms were a cross and a branch of palm tree. We are not told if he had a motto. It, at all events, could not have been nulla vestigia retrorsum. They who affirm that the pilgrim was a merchant, declare that his descendants lost their nobility by falling again into commercial ways—a course which was considered very derogatory, and indeed, degrading, in those exclusive days.

I may mention here that Heraldry has, after all, very unfairly treated many of the doers of great deeds. No person below the degree of a knight could bear a cognizance of his own. Thus, many a squire may have outdone his master in bravery; and indeed, many a simple soldier may have done the same, but the memory of it could not go down to posterity, because the valiant actor was not noble enough to be worthy of distinction. In our English army, much the same rule still obtains. Illustrious incompetence is rewarded with “orders,” but plain John Smith, who has captured a gun with his own hands, receives a couple of sovereigns, which only enable him to degrade himself by getting drunk with his friends. Our heraldic writers approve of this dainty way of conferring distinctions. An anonymous author of a work on Heraldry and Chivalry, published at Worcester “sixty years since,” says—“We must consider that had heraldry distributed its honors indiscriminately, and with too lavish a hand, making no distinction between gentry and plebeians, the glory of arms would have been lost, and their lustre less refulgent.”

But it is clear that the rule which allowed none to bear cognizance who was not of the rank of a knight, was sometimes infringed. Thus, when Edward the Black Prince made the stout Sir James Audley, his own especial knight, with an annuity of five hundred marks, for gallant services at Poictiers, Audley divided the annuity among his four squires, Delves, Dutton, Foulthurst, and Hawkeston, and also gave them permission to wear his own achievements, in memory of the way in which they had kept at his side on the bloody day of Poictiers.

The fashion of different families wearing the same devices had, however, its inconveniences. Thus, it happened that at this very battle of Poictiers, or a little before it, Sir John Chandos reconnoitring the French army, fell in with the Seigneur de Clerment, who was reconnoitring the English army. Each saw that the device on the upper vestment of his adversary was the same as his own, blue worked with rays of gold round the border. They each fell to sharp, and not very courteous words. The French lord at length remarked that Sir John’s claim to wear the device was just like “the boastings of you English. You can not invent anything new,” added the angry French knight, “but when you stumble on a pretty novelty, you forthwith appropriate it.” After more angry words they separated, vowing that in next day’s fight, they would make good all their assertions.

As the general rule was, that squires could not bear a cognizance, so also was it a rule that knights should only fight with their equals.

It is in allusion to this rule that Don Quixote says to Sancho Panza: “Friend Sancho, for the future, whenever thou perceivest us to be any way abused by such inferior fellows, thou art not to expect that I should offer to draw my sword against them; for I will not do it in the least; no, do thou then draw and chastise them as thou thinkest fit; but if any knight come to take their part, then will I be sure to step in between thee and danger.”

Knights, as I have said, have had honor conferred on them for very strange reasons, in many countries, but in none for slighter reasons, perhaps, than in France. We may probably except Belgium; for there is a living knight there, who obtained his order of chivalry for his pleasant little exhibition of gallantry in furnishing new-laid eggs every morning at the late queen’s table, when every hen but his, in the suburban village of Laecken had ceased to lay!

Dumas, in his “Salvandire,” satirically illustrates how knights were occasionally made in the days of Louis XIV. The hero of that dashing romance finds himself a captive in the prison of Fort l’Evêque; and as the king will not grant him permission to leave, he resolves to leave without permission. He makes the attempt by night, descends from the window in the dark, is caught by the thigh on a spike, and is ultimately carried to a cell and a bed within his prison-walls. The following day the governor waits upon him, and questions him upon the motives for his dangerous enterprise. The good governor’s curiosity is founded solely on his anxiety to elicit from the prisoner, that the desire of the latter to escape was not caused by his dissatisfaction with any of the prison arrangements, whether of discipline or diet. The captive signs a certificate to that effect, adding, that his sole motive for endeavoring to set himself free, was because he had never done anything to deserve that he should be put under restraint. A few days after, the governor announces to the recluse that the certificate of the latter has had an excellent effect. Roger supposes that it has gained him his liberty; but the governor complacently remarks that it has done better than that, and that the king, in acknowledgment of the strict character of the governor’s surveillance, has created him chevalier of the order of St. Louis. If all the prisoners had succeeded in escaping, as nearly as Roger, the governor would probably have been made Knight of the Holy Ghost! The king of France had many such faithful servants; but history affords many examples of a truer fidelity than this; particularly the old romances and legendary history—examples of faithfulness even after death; but, though there may be many more romantic in those chronicles, I doubt if there is any one so touching as the proof of fidelity which a knighted civilian, Sir Thomas Meautis, gave of his affection for Lord Bacon, to whom that ancient servant of the great lawyer, erected a monument at his own cost. Hamond Lestrange relates a curious incident, to show that these two were not divided even after death. “Sir Thomas,” says Lestrange, “was not nearer to him living than dead; for this Sir Thomas ending his life about a score of years after, it was his lot to be inhumed so near his lord’s sepulchre, that in the forming of his grave, part of the viscount’s body was exposed to view; which being espied by a doctor of physic, he demanded the head to be given to him; and did most shamefully disport himself with that skull which was somewhile the continent of so vast treasures of knowledge.”

Other knights have been celebrated for other qualities. Thus, Sir Julius Cæsar never heard Bishop Hackett preach without sending him a piece of money. Indeed, the good knight never heard any preacher deliver a sermon without sending him money, a pair of gloves, or some other little gift. He was unwilling, he said, to hear the Word of God, gratis.

Other knights have cared less to benefit preachers, than to set up for makers or explainers of doctrines themselves. Thus the Chevalier Ramsay held that Adam and Eve begot the entire human race in Paradise, the members of which fell with their procreators; and in this way the chevalier found in an intelligible form “the great, ancient, and luminous doctrine of our co-existence with our first parents.” The Chevalier deemed that in teaching such doctrine he was rearing plants for a new Paradise; but he was not half so usefully engaged as some brother knights who were practically engaged as planters. We may cite Sir John St. Aubyn, who introduced plane-trees into Cornwall in 1723; and Sir Anthony Ashley, the Dorchester knight, who enjoys the reputation of having introduced cabbages into England about the middle of the sixteenth century.

In contrast with these useful knights, the person of the once famous Chevalier de Lorenzi seems to rise before me, and of him I will now add a few words, by way of conclusion to my miscellaneous volume.

It is perhaps the tritest of platitudes to say that men are distinguished by various qualities; but it is among the strangest if not most novel of paradoxes, that the same man should be remarkable for endowments of the most opposite quality. The eccentric knight whose name and title I have given above, is, however, an illustration of the fact; namely, that a man may be at once stupid and witty. It was chiefly for his stupidity that Lorenzi was famous, a stupidity which excited laughter. I must, nevertheless, say in behalf of the brother of the once celebrated minister of France at the Court of Florence, in the days of Louis XV., that his stupidity so often looks like wit, as to induce the belief that it was a humor too refined for his hearers to appreciate.

Acute as Grimm was, he seems to have undervalued the chevalier in this respect. That literary minister-plenipotentiary of the Duke of Saxe Gotha could only see in the chevalier the most extraordinary of originals. He acknowledges, at the same time, Lorenzi’s high feeling of honor, and his frank and gentle spirit. The chevalier was crammed with scientific knowledge, but so confusedly that, according to Grimm, he could never explain himself in an intelligible way, or without exciting shouts of laughter on the part of his hearers. Madame de Geoffrin, when comparing the chevalier with the ungraceful M. de Burigny, said that the latter was awkward in body, but that Lorenzi was awkward in mind. As the latter never spoke without, at least, an air of profound reflection, and had therewith a piquant Florentine accent, his mistakes were more relished. I do not think much of his misapprehension when introduced, at Lyons, to M. de la Michaudière, in whose company he dined, at the residence of the commandant of the city. The gentleman was addressed by an old acquaintance as Le Michaudière, and Lorenzi, mistaking this for L’Ami Chaudière, persisted in calling the dignified official by the appellation of Monsieur Chaudière, which, to the proud intendant of Lyons, must have been as bad as if the chevalier had certified that the intendant’s father was a brazier.

He was far more happy, whether by chance or design, I can not say, at a subsequent supper at M. de la Michaudière’s house. At the table sat M. le Normant, husband of Madame de Pompadour, then at the height of her brilliant infamy. Lorenzi hearing from a neighbor, in reply to an inquiry, that the gentleman was the consort of the lady in question, forthwith addressed him as Monsieur de Pompadour, which was as severe an infliction as husband so situated could well have endured.

This honorable chevalier was clearly not a religious man—but among knights and other distinguished personages in France, and elsewhere, at the period of which I am treating, the two terms were perfectly distinct, and had no necessary connection. Accordingly, a lady who had called on Lorenzi one Sunday morning, before eleven o’clock, proposed, at the end of their conversation, to go with him to mass. “Do they still celebrate mass?” asked the chevalier, with an air of astonishment. As he had not attended mass for fifteen years, Grimm gravely asserts that the Florentine imagined that it was no longer celebrated. “The more,” adds the epistolary baron, “that as he never went out before two o’clock, he no longer recollected that he had seen a church-door open.”

The chevalier, who was Knight of the Order of St. Stephen of Tuscany, and who had withdrawn from the French Army, with the rank of colonel, after the conquest of Minorca, had a great devotion toward the abstract sciences. He studied geometry and astronomy, and had the habit, says Grimm, to measure the events of life, and reduce them to geometrical value. As he was thoughtful, he more frequently, when addressed, made reply to abstruse questionings of his own brain than to persons who spoke to him. Grimm, after saying that the Knight of St. Stephen was only struck by the true or false side of a question, and never by its pleasant or amusing aspect, illustrates his saying by an anecdote, in which many persons will fail to find any remarkable point. Grimm encountered him at Madame Geoffrin’s, after his return from a tour in Italy. “I saw him embroiling his senses with the genealogies of two ladies in whose society he passes his life, and who bear the same name, although they are of distinct families. Madame Geoffrin endeavored to draw him from these genealogical snares, observing to him:—‘Really, chevalier, you are in your dotage. It is worse than ever.’ ‘Madame,’ answered the chevalier, ‘life is so short!’” Grimm thought he should have done rank injustice to posterity if he had not recorded this reply for the benefit of future students of laconic wit. And again:—Grimm shows us the chevalier walking with Monsieur de St. Lambert toward Versailles. On the way, the latter asked him his age. “I am sixty,” said the knight. “I did not think you so old,” rejoined his friend. “Well,” replied the chevalier, “when I say sixty, I am not indeed quite so old, just yet; but—” “But how old are you then, in reality?” asked his companion. “Fifty-five, exactly; but why may I not be allowed to accustom myself to change my age every year, as I do my shirt?”

One day, he was praising the figure of a lady, but instead of saying that she had the form of a nymph, he said that her shape was like that of Mademoiselle Allard. “Oh!” cried Grimm, “you are not lucky, chevalier, in your comparison. Mademoiselle Allard may be deservedly eulogized for many qualities, but nobody ever thought of praising her shape.” “Likely enough,” said Lorenzi, “for I do not know, nor, indeed, have I ever seen her; but as everybody talks about Mademoiselle Allard, I thought I might talk about her too.”

If there was satire in this it was not of so neat a quality as that exhibited by him at Madame Greffon’s, where he was spending an evening with Grimm and D’Alembert. The last two were seated, and conversing. Lorenzi stood behind them, with his back to the chimney-piece, and scarcely able to hold up his head, so overcome was he by a desire to sleep. “Chevalier,” said Grimm, “you must find our conversation a horrid bore, since you fall asleep when you are on your legs.” “Oh, no!” exclaimed the chevalier, “you see I go to sleep when I like.” The naïveté with which he insinuated that he liked to go to sleep rather than listen to the small talk of a wit and a philosopher, was expressed with a delicious delicacy.

Of his non-sequential remarks Grimm supplies several. He was once speaking disparagingly of M. de St. Lambert’s knowledge of chess. “You forget,” said the latter, “that I gained fifteen louis to your thirty sous, during our campaign in Minorca.” “Oh, ay,” answered the knight, “but that was toward the end of the siege!”

It was at this siege that he used to go to the trenches with his astronomical instruments, to make observations. He one day returned to his quarters without his instruments, having left them all in the trenches. “They will certainly be stolen,” said a friend. “That can’t be,” said Lorenzi, “for I left my watch with them.”

And yet this “distraught” knight was the cause, remote cause, of the death of Admiral Byng. He discovered, by mere chance, in his quarters at Minorca, a book of signals as used by the English fleet. He hastened with it to the Prince de Beaubeau, who, in his turn, hastened to place it before the Marshal de Richelieu. The commanders could scarcely believe in their good fortune, but when the naval combat commenced it was seen that the English observed this system of signals exactly. With this knowledge it was easy to anticipate all their manœuvres, and they were obliged to withdraw with disgrace, which Byng was made to expiate by his death. The chevalier never thought of asking for a reward, and his government entirely forgot to give him one.

When about to accompany M. de Mirepoix, who was appointed embassador to London, he packed up his own things and that so perfectly that it was not till he had sent them off that he discovered he had left himself nothing to travel in but the shirt and robe-de-chambre which he wore while employed in thus disposing of the rest of his wardrobe.

He lived in a small apartment at the Luxembourg, as persons of like rank and small means reside in the royal palace at Hampton Court. One day, on descending the staircase he slipped, and broke his nose. On looking round for the cause of his accident, he observed a whitish fluid on the steps; and, calling the porter, he rated him soundly for allowing this soapy water to remain on the staircase. “It is barley water,” said the porter, “which a waiter from the café spilled as he carried it along.” “Oh! if that be the case,” replied the chevalier, in a mild tone, and with his hand up to his mutilated nose, “if that be the case, it is I who am in the wrong.”

Grimm adds, in summing up his character, that he was richer in pocket handkerchiefs than any other man. As his apartment was just under the roof of the palace, and that he, almost every day on going out, forgot to take a handkerchief with him, he found it less trouble to buy a new than to ascend to his room and procure an old one. Accordingly, a mercer in his neighborhood had a fresh handkerchief ready for him every day.

The history of eccentric knights would make a volume of itself. Here, therefore, I will conclude, grateful to the readers who may have honored me by perusing any portion of the miscellaneous pages which I have devoted to illustrations of chivalry, and, adding a remark of Johnson, who says, touching the respect paid to those who bear arms, that “The naval and military professions have the dignity of danger, and that mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness.”

THE END.