Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL.

“Le duel, ma mie, ne vaut pas un duo, de Lully.”

Crispin Mourant.

As an effect of chivalry, duelling deserves some passing notice. Its modern practice was but an imitation of chivalric encounters, wherein the issue of battle was left to the judgment of God.

Bassompierre dates the origin of duelling (in France) from the period of Henri II. Previous to that king’s reign, the quarrels of gentlemen were determined by the decree of the constable and marshals of France. These only allowed knightly encounters in the lists, when they could not of themselves decide upon the relative justice and merits of the dispute.

“I esteem him no gentleman,” said Henri one day, “who has the lie given him, and who does not chastise the giver.” It was a remark lightly dropped, but it did not fall unheeded. The king in fact encouraged those who resorted, of their own will, to a bloody arbitrament of their dissensions; and duelling became so “fashionable,” that even the penalty of death levelled against those who practised it, was hardly effectual enough to check duellists. At the close of the reign of Henri IV. and the commencement of that of Louis XIII. the practice was in least activity; but after the latter period, as the law was not rigorously applied, the foolish usage was again revived; and sanguinary simpletons washed out their folly in blood.

But duelling has a more remote origin than that ascribed to it by Bassompierre. Sabine, in his “Dictionary of Duelling,” a recently-published American work, dates its rise from the challenge of the Philistine accepted by David! However this may be, it is a strange anomaly that an advocate for the savage and sinful habit of duelling has appeared in that France which claims to be the leader of civilization. Jules Janin has, among his numberless feuilletons published three reasons authorizing men to appeal to single combat. The above M. Janin divides the world into three parts—a world of cravens; a world in which opinion is everything; and a world of hypocrites and calumniators. He considers the man who has not the heart to risk his life in a duel, as one lost in the world of cravens, because the legion of cowards by whom he is surrounded will assume courage at his expense.

Further, according to our gay neighbor’s reasoning, the man is lost in this world, in which opinion is everything, who will not seek to obtain a good opinion at the sword’s point.

Again, says M. Janin, the man is lost in this world of hypocrites and calumniators who will not demand reparation, sword in hand, for the calumnies and malicious reports to which he has been exposed. It would be insulting to the common sense of my readers to affect to point out to them the rottenness of reasons like these. They could only convince such men as Buckingham and Alfieri, and others in circumstances like theirs; Buckingham after killing Lord Shrewsbury at Barnes, and pressing the head of Lady Shrewsbury on his bloody shirt; and Alfieri, who, after a vile seduction, and very nearly a terrible murder in defence of it, went home and slept more peacefully than he had ever slept before: “dopo tanto e si stranie peripizie d’un sol giorno, non ho dormito mai d’un sonno piu tenace e piu dolce.” Alfieri would have agreed with M. Janin, that in duelling lay the safeguard of all that remains to us of civilization. But how comes it then that civilization is thus a wreck, since duelling has been so long exercising a protective influence over it?

However few, though dazzling, were the virtues possessed by the chivalrous heroes of ancient history, it must be conceded to them, that they possessed that of valor, or a disregard of life, in an eminent degree. The instances of cowardice are so rare that they prove the general rule of courage; yet these men, with no guides but a spurious divinity and a false philosophy, never dreamed of having recourse to the duel, as a means of avenging a private wrong. Marius, indeed, was once challenged, but it was by a semi-barbarous Teutonic chief, whom the haughty Roman recommended, if he were weary of his life to go and hang himself. Themistocles, too, whose wisdom and courage the most successful of our modern gladiators may admire and envy, when Eurybiades threatened to give him a blow, exclaimed, “Strike, but hear me!” Themistocles, it must be remembered, was a man of undaunted courage, while his jealous provoker was notorious for little else but his extreme cowardice.

But, in truth, there have been brave men in all countries, who have discouraged this barbarous practice. A Turkish pacha reminded a man who had challenged a fellow Spahi, that they had no right to slay one another while there were foes to subdue. The Dauphin of Viennois told the Count of Savoy, who had challenged him, that he would send the count one of his fiercest bulls, and that if the count were so minded, his lordship of Savoy might test his prowess against an antagonist difficult to overcome. The great Frederick would not tolerate the practice of duelling in his army; and he thoroughly despised the arguments used for its justification. A greater man than Frederick, Turenne, would never allow himself to be what was called “concerned in an affair of honor.” Once, when the hero of Sintzheim and the Rhine had half drawn his sword to punish a disgusting insult, to which he had been subjected by a rash young officer, he thrust it back into the sheath, with the words: “Young man, could I wipe your blood from my conscience with as much ease as I can this filthy proof of your folly from my face, I would take your life upon the spot.”

Even the chivalrous knights who thought duelling a worthy occupation for men of valor, reduced opportunities for its practice to a very small extent. Uniting with the church, they instituted the Savior’s Truce, by which duels were prohibited from Wednesday to the following Monday, because, it was said, those days had been consecrated by our Savior’s Passion. This, in fact, left only Tuesday as a clear day for settling quarrels by force of arms.

There probably never existed a mortal who was opposed by more powerful or more malignant adversaries than St. Augustin was. His great enemies the Donatists never, it is true, challenged him to any more dangerous affray than a war of literary controversy. But it was in answer to one of their missiles hurled against him, in the form of an assertion, that the majority of authors was on their side, he aptly told them that it was the sign of a cause destitute of truth when only the erring authority of many men could be relied on.

The Norman knights or chiefs introduced the single combat among us. It is said they were principally men who had disgraced themselves in the face of the enemy, and who sought to wipe out the disgrace in the blood of single individuals. It is worthy of remark too, that when king and sovereign princes had forbidden duelling, under the heaviest penalties, the popes absolved the monarchs from their vows when the observance of them would have put in peril the lives of offending nobles who had turned to Rome in their perplexity, and who had gained there a reputation for piety, as Hector did, who was esteemed so highly religious, for no other reason than that he had covered with rich gifts the altar of the father of Olympus.

Supported by the appearance that impunity was to be purchased at Rome, and encouraged by the example of fighting-cardinals themselves, duelling and assassination stalked hand in hand abroad. In France alone, in the brief space of eighteen years, four thousand gentlemen were killed in rencontres, upon quarrels of the most trivial nature. In the same space of time, not less than fourteen thousand pardons for duelling were granted. In one province alone, of France, in Limousin, one hundred and twenty gentlemen were slain in six months—a greater number than had honorably fallen in the same period, which was one of war, in defence of the sovereign, their country, and their homes. The term rencontre was used in France to elude the law. If gentlemen “met” by accident and fought, lawyers pleaded that this was not a duel, which required preliminaries between the two parties. How frequent the rencontres were, in spite of the penalty of death, is thus illustrated by Victor Hugo, in his Marion Delorme:—

“Toujours nombre de duels, le trois c’était d’Angennes

Contre d’Arquien, pour avoir porté du point de Gènes.

Lavarde avec Pons s’est rencontré le dix,

Pour avoir pris à Pons la femme de Sourdis.

Sourdis avec Dailly pour une du théâtre

De Mondorf. Le neuf, Nogent avec Lachâtre,

Pour avoir mal écrit trois vers de Colletet.

Gorde avec Margaillan, pour l’heure qu’il était.

D’Himière avec Gondi, pour le pas à l’église.

Et puis tous les Brissac avec tous les Soubise,

A propos d’un pari d’un cheval contre un chien.

Enfin, Caussade avec Latournelle, pour rien.

Pour le plaisir, Caussade a tué Latournelle.

Jeremy Taylor denounced this practice with great earnestness, and with due balancing of the claims of honor and of Christianity. “Yea; but flesh and blood can not endure a blow or a disgrace. Grant that too; but take this into the account: flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

What man could endure for honor’s sake, however, is shown in the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis, who, in the seventeenth century, was asked to be second to a friend, when duels were punishable by death to all parties concerned in them. The friend of De Pontis pressed it on him, as a custom always practised among friends; and his captain and lieutenant-colonel did not merely permit, but ordered him to do what his friend desired.

Boldly as many knights met death, there were not a few who did their best, and that very wisely, to avoid “the inevitable.”

Valorously as some chevaliers encountered deadly peril, the German knights, especially took means to avoid the grisly adversary when they could. For this purpose, they put on the Noth-hemd or shirt of need. It was supposed to cover the wearer with invulnerability. The making of the garment was a difficult and solemn matter. Several maidens of known integrity assembled together on the eve of the Nativity, and wove and sewed together this linen garment, in the name of the devil! On the bosom of the shirt were worked two heads; one was long-bearded and covered with the knightly helmet, the other was savage of aspect, and crowned like the king of demons. A cross was worked on either side. How this could save a warrior from a mortal stroke, it would be difficult to say. If it was worn over the armor, perhaps the helmeted effigy was supposed to protect the warrior, and the demoniacal one to affright his adversary. But then, this shirt similarly made and adorned, was woven by ladies when about to become mothers of knights or of common men. What use it could be in such case, I leave to the “commères” to settle. My own vocation of “gossip” will not help me to the solution.

But if chivalry had its shirts of need in Germany, to save from death, in England and France it had its “mercy-knives” to swiftly inflict it. Why they were so called I do not know, for after all they were only employed in order to kill knights in full armor, by plunging the knife through the bars of the visor into the eye. After the battle of Pavia, many of the French were killed with pickaxes by the peasantry, hacking and hewing through the joints of the armor.

How anxious were the sires of those times to train their children how best to destroy life! This was more especially the case among what were called the “half-christened Irish” of Connaught. In this province, the people left the right arms of their male infants unchristened. They excepted that part coming under the divine influences of baptism, in order that the children, when grown to the stature of fighting men, might deal more merciless and deadly blows. There was some such superstitious observance as this, I think, in ancient Germany. It can not be said, in reference to the suppressing of this observance, as was remarked by Stow after the city authorities had put down the martial amusement of the London apprentices—contending against one another of an evening with cudgels and bucklers, while a host of admiring maids as well as men stood by to applaud or censure—that the open pastime being suppressed, worse practice within doors probably followed.

Stout fellows were some of the knights of the romantic period, if we may believe half that is recorded of them. There is one, Branor le Brun, who is famous for having been a living Quintain. The game so called consists of riding at a heavy sack suspended on a balanced beam, and getting out of its way, if possible, before the revolving beam brought it round violently against the back of the assailant’s head. When Palamedes challenged old Branor, the aged knight rather scornfully put him aside as an unworthy yet valiant knight. Branor, however, offered to sit in his saddle motionless, while Palamedes rode at him, and got unhorsed by Branor’s mere inert resistance. I forget how many knights Branor le Brun knocked over their horses’ cruppers, after this quiet fashion.

It was not all courtesy in battle or in duel. Even Gyron, who was called the “courteous,” was a very “rough customer” indeed, when he had his hand on the throat of an antagonist. We hear of him jumping with all his force upon a fallen and helpless foe, tearing his helmet from its fastenings by main force, battering the knight’s face with it till he was senseless, and then beating on his head with the pommel of his sword, till the wretched fellow was dead. At this sort of pommelling there was never knight so expert as the great Bayard. The courtesy of the most savage in fight, was however undeniable when a lady was in the case. Thus we hear of a damsel coming to a fountain at which four knights were sitting, and one of them wishes to take her. The other three object, observing that the damsel is without a knight to protect her, and that she is, therefore, according to the law of chivalry, exempt from being attacked. And again, if a knight slew an adversary of equal degree, he did not retain his sword if the latter was a gift from some lady. The damsel, in such case, could claim it, and no knight worthy of the name would have thought of refusing to comply with her very natural request. Even ladies were not to be won, in certain cases, except by valor; as Arthur, that king of knights, would not win, nor retain, Britain, by any other means. The head of Bran the Blessed, it may be remembered, was hidden in the White Hill, near London, where, as long as it remained, Britain was invulnerable. Arthur, however removed it. He scorned to keep the island by any other means than his own sword and courage; and he was ready to fight any man in any quarrel.

Never did knight meet death more nobly than that Captain Douglas, whose heroism is recorded by Sir William Temple, and who “stood and burnt in one of our ships at Chatham, when his soldiers left him, because it never should be said a Douglas quitted his post without orders.” Except as an example of heroic endurance, this act, however, was in some degree a mistake, for the state did not profit by it. There was something more profitable in the act of Von Speyk, in our own time. When hostilities were raging between Holland and Belgium, in 1831, the young Dutch captain, just named, happened to be in the Scheldt, struggling in his gun-boat against a gale which, in spite of all his endeavors and seamanship, drove him ashore, under the guns of the Belgians. A crowd of Belgian volunteers leaped aboard, ordered him to haul down his colors and surrender. Von Speyk hurried below to the magazine, fell upon his knees in prayer, flung a lighted cigar into an open barrel of powder, and blew his ship to atoms, with nearly all who were on board. If he, by this sacrifice, prevented a Dutch vessel from falling into the enemy’s power, he also deprived Holland of many good seamen. The latter country, however, only thought of the unselfish act of heroism, in one who had been gratuitously educated in the orphan house at Amsterdam, and who acquitted his debt to his country, by laying down his life when such sacrifice was worth making. His king and countrymen proved that they could appreciate the noble act. The statue of Von Speyk was placed by the side of that of De Ruyter, and the government decreed that as long as a Dutch navy existed there should be one vessel bearing the name of Von Speyk.

To return to the knights of earlier days, I will observe that indifferent as many of them were to meeting death, they, and indeed other men of note, were very far from being so as to the manner in which they should be disposed of after death. In their stone or marble coffins, they lay in graves so shallow that the cover of the coffin formed part of the pavement of the church. Whittingham, the Puritan Dean of Durham, took up many of their coffins and converted them into horse or swine troughs. This is the dean who is said to have turned the finely-wrought holy-water vessels into salting-tubs for his own use.

Modern knights have had other cares about their graves than that alluded to above. Sir William Browne, for instance, one of George II.’s knights, and a medical man of some repute, who died in 1770, ordered by his will that when his coffin was lowered into the grave, there should be placed upon it, “in its leathern case or coffin, my pocket Elzevir Horace, comes viæ vitæque dulcis et utilis, worn out with and by me.” There was nothing more unreasonable in this than in a warrior-knight being buried with all his weapons around him. And, with respect to warrior-knights and what was done with them after death, I know nothing more curious than what is told us by Stavely on the authority of Streder. I will give it in the author’s own words.

“Don John of Austria,” says Stavely, “governor of the Netherlands for Philip II. of Spain, dying at his camp at Buge” (Bouges, a mile from Namur), “was carried from thence to the great church at Havre, where his funeral was solemnized and a monument to posterity erected for him there by Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma. Afterward his body was taken to pieces, and the bones, packed in mails, were privately carried into Spain, where, being set together with small wires, the body was rejointed again, which being filled or stuffed with cotton, and richly habited, Don John was presented to the King, entire, leaning upon his commander’s staff, and looking as if he were alive and breathing. Afterward the corpse being carried to the Church of St. Laurence, at the Escurial, was there buried near his father, Charles V., with a fitting monument erected for him.”

Considering that there was, and is, a suspicion that Philip II. had poisoned his kinsman, the interview must have been a startling one. But Philip II. was not, perhaps, so afraid of dead men as the fourth Spanish king of that name. Philip IV., by no means an unknightly monarch, was born on a Good Friday, and as there is a Spanish superstition that they who are born on that day see ghosts whenever they pass the place where any one has been killed or buried, who died a violent death, this king fell into a habit of carrying his head so high, in order to avoid seeing those spirits, that his nose was continually en l’air, and he appeared to see nobody.

Romance, and perhaps faithful history, are full of details of the becoming deaths of ancient knights, upon the field. I question, however, if even Sir Philip Sidney’s was more dignified than that of a soldier of the 58th infantry, recorded in Nichols’s “Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century.” A straggling shot had struck him in the stomach. As he was too dreadfully wounded to be removed, he desired his comrades would pray by him, and the whole guard knelt round him in prayer till he died. Bishop Hurd remarked, when this was told him, that “it was true religion.” There was more of religion in such sympathy than there was of taste in the condolence of Alnwick, on the death of Hugh, Duke of Northumberland—a rather irascible officer, and Knight of the Garter. “O,” cried the Alnwick poet—

“O rueful sight! Behold, how lost to sense

The millions stand, suspended by suspense!”

But all fruitlessly were the millions so suspended, for as the minstrel remarked in his Threnodia—

“When Time shall yield to Death, Dukes must obey.”

“Dying in harness,” is a favorite phrase in chivalric annals to illustrate the bravery of a knight falling in battle, “clothed in complete steel.” So to die, however, was not always to die in a fray. Hume says of Seward, Earl of Northumberland, that there are two circumstances related of him, “which discover his high sense of honor and martial disposition. When intelligence was brought to him of his son Osborne’s death, he was inconsolable till he heard the wound was received on his breast, and that he had behaved with great gallantry in the action. When he found his own death approaching, he ordered his servants to dress him in a complete suit of armor, and sitting erect on the couch, with a spear in his hand, declared that in that position, the only one worthy of a warrior, he would patiently await the fatal moment.”

See how the chief of many a field

Prepares to give his latest breath;

And, like a well-trimmed warrior, yield

Becomingly t’impending death—

That one, stern conqueror of all,

Of chieftain in embattled tower,

Of lord within his ancient hall,

And maiden in her trellised bower.

To meet that surest of all foes,

From off his soft and pillowed bed,

With dignity old Seward rose,

And to a couch of state was led.

Fainting, yet firm of purpose there,

Stately as monarch on his throne,

Upright he sat, with kingly air,

To meet the coming foe, alone.

“Take from these limbs,” he weakly cried,

“This soft and womanish attire;

Let cloak and cap be laid aside—

Seward will die as died his sire:

Not clad in silken vest and shirt,

Like princes in a fairy tale;

With iron be these old limbs girt—

My vest of steel, my shirt of mail.

“Close let my sheaf of arrows stand;

My mighty battle-axe now bring;

My ashen spear place in my hand;

Around my neck my buckler sling.

Let my white locks once more be pressed

By the old cap of Milan steel;

Such soldier’s gear becomes them best—

They love their old defence to feel.

“’Tis well! Now buckle to my waist

My well-tried gleaming blade of Spain

My old blood leaps in joyful haste

To feel it on my thigh again.

And here this pendent loop upon,

Suspend my father’s dagger bright;

My spurs of gold, too, buckle on—

Or Seward dies not like a knight.”

’Twas done. No tear bedimmed his eyes—

His manly heart had ne’er known fear;

It answered not the deep-fetched sighs

Of friends and comrades standing near.

Death was upon him: that grim foe

Who smites the craven as the brave.

With patience Seward met the blow—

Prepared and willing for the grave.

The manner of the death, or rather of the dying of Seward, Earl of Northumberland, was in part, unconsciously, imitated by the great Mansfeldt. When the career of the latter was nearly at its close, his fragile frame was already worn out by excess of action—his once stout soul irritated by disappointment, and his former vigorous constitution shattered by the ravages of a disease which had long preyed on it in secret. The erst gallant knight lay helpless in the miserable village of Zara, in Dalmatia. As he found his last moment drawing near, he put on one of his richest uniforms, and girded his favorite sword to his side. It was the one he most constantly carried in battle. Thus accoutred, he summoned his chief officers to attend him. He was held up by the two whom he most wished to distinguish, because of their unwavering fidelity. Thus upheld, he exhorted all to go on, unwearied, in the path of glory; and, living or dying, never to bate a breath of inveterate hatred for Austria—whose government has been accursed in all time, since there has been an Austria, for its unmitigated infamy. “With the indifference of a man preparing for a journey of no extraordinary importance,” thus speaks Naylor, when describing the scene, “he continued tranquilly to converse with his friends to the latest moment of his existence. His body was interred with military pomp at Spalatio, in Dalmatia, at the expense of the Venetians. Thus was the emperor delivered from an enemy who, though often defeated, never ceased to be formidable; and whose transcendent genius was so fertile in resources, that, without the smallest funds to support the expenses of war, he maintained an honorable contest during seven campaigns against the most powerful monarchs in Europe.”

His hour at length is come:

The hero of a hundred fields,

Who never yielded, only yields

To Him who rules the tomb.

He whose loud trumpet’s blast,

Carried upon the trembling gale

The voice of death o’er hill and dale,

Is struck himself at last.

The same who, but of late,

Serenely saw destruction hurled,

And slaughter sweeping through the world,

Serenely meets his fate.

The spirit of the brave,

That led him o’er the embattled plain

’Gainst lines of foes, o’er countless slain,

Waits on him to the grave.

And with his latest breath

The warrior dons his proud array,

Prepared to meet, and to obey,

His last commander—Death!

The mournful tears and sighs

Fall not for him who, like the swan,

Wears his best plumes, sings sweetly on,

Sounds his last song—and dies!

With regard to the burial of knights, we may observe that, down to a comparatively late period the knights and barons of England were buried with much solemn splendor. At the obsequies of a baron, there was an official present who wore the armor of the defunct, mounted a horse in full trappings, and carried the banner, shield, and helmet, of the deceased. So, in Henry the Eighth’s time, Lord William Courtney was buried with the ceremonies observed at the funeral of an earl, to which rank it had been the king’s intention to elevate him. On this occasion Sir Edmund Carew, a gallant knight, rode into the church in full armor, with the point of his battle-axe downward—a token, like a reversed torch, of death.

The latest instance I have met with of a union of ancient and modern customs at the burial of a knight, occurred at Treves, in 1781, at the interment of the Teutonic knight, General Frederick Casimir. This gallant soldier’s charger was led to the brink of the grave in which the body had just been deposited; the throat of the steed was swiftly cut by an official, and the carcass of the horse was flung down upon the coffin of the knight. Such sacrifices were once common enough. At the funerals in England of cavalry soldiers, or of mounted officers, the horse is still processionally conducted to the brink of the grave, but we are too wisely economical to leave him there, or to fling him into it.

Where chivalry had great perils and temptations, we need not be surprised to find that there were many scions of noble houses who either declined to win spurs by encountering mortal danger, or who soon grew weary of making the attempt. Let us, then, consider the unambitious gentlemen who grew “tired of it.”