Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

I have said that this knight who took such unfair advantage of a foe, was more of a Christian nevertheless than many of his fellows. This is illustrated by another trait highly illustrative of the principles which influenced those brave and pious warriors. De Joinville remarks that on the eve of Shrove-tide, 1249, he saw a thing which he “must relate.” On the vigil of that day, he tells us, there died a very valiant and prudent knight, Sir Hugh de Landricourt, a follower of De Joinville’s own banner. The burial service was celebrated; but half-a-dozen of De Joinville’s knights, who were present as mourners, talked so irreverently loud that the priest was disturbed as he was saying mass. Our good chronicler went over to them, reproved them, and informed them that “it was unbecoming gentlemen thus to talk while the mass was celebrating.” The ungodly half-dozen, thereupon, burst into a roar of laughter, and informed De Joinville, in their turn, that they were discussing as to which of the six should marry the widow of the defunct Sir Hugh, then lying before them on his bier! De Joinville, with decency and common sense “rebuked them sharply, and said such conversation was indecent and improper, for that they had too soon forgotten their companion.” From this circumstance De Joinville tries to draw a logical inference, if not conclusion. He makes a sad confusion of causes and effects, rewards and punishments, practice and principle, human accidents and especial interferences on the part of Heaven. For instance, after narrating the mirth of the knights at the funeral of Sir Hugh, and their disputing as to which of them should woo the widow, he adds: “Now it happened on the morrow, when the first grand battle took place, although we may laugh at their follies, that of all the six not one escaped death, and they remained unburied. The wives of the whole six re-married! This makes it credible that God leaves no such conduct unpunished. With regard to myself I fared little better, for I was grievously wounded in the battle of Shrove Tuesday. I had besides the disorder in my legs and mouth before spoken of, and such a rheum in my head it ran through my mouth and nostrils. In addition I had a double fever called a quartan, from which God defend us! And with these illnesses was I confined to my bed for half of Lent.” And thus, if the married knights were retributively slain for talking about the wooing of a comrade’s widow, so De Joinville himself was somewhat heavily afflicted for having undertaken to reprove them! I must add one more incident, however, to show how in the battle-field the human and Christian principle was not altogether lost.

The poor priest, whom the wicked and wedded knights had interrupted in the service of the mass by follies, at which De Joinville himself seems to think that men may, perhaps, be inclined to laugh, became as grievously ill as De Joinville himself. “And one day,” says the latter, “when he was singing mass before me as I lay in my bed, at the moment of the elevation of the host I saw him so exceedingly weak that he was near fainting; but when I perceived he was on the point of falling to the ground, I flung myself out of bed, sick as I was, and taking my coat, embraced him, and bade him be at his ease, and take courage from Him whom he held in his hand. He recovered some little; but I never quitted him till he had finished the mass, which he completed, and this was the last, for he never celebrated another, but died; God receive his soul!” This is a pleasanter picture of Christian chivalry than any other that is given by this picturesque chronicler.

Chivalry, generally, has been more satirized and sneered at by the philosophers than by any other class of men. The sages stigmatize the knights as mere boasters of bravery, and in some such terms as those used by Dussaute, they assert that the boasters of their valor are as little to be trusted as those who boast of their probity. “Defiez vous de quiconque parle toujours de sa probité comme de quiconque parle toujours de bravoure.”

It will not, however, do for the philosophers to sneer at their martial brethren. Now that Professor Jacobi has turned from grave studies for the benefit of mankind, to the making of infernal machines for the destruction of brave and helpless men, at a distance, that very unsuccessful but would-be homicide has, as far as he himself is concerned, reduced science to a lower level than that occupied by men whose trade is arms. But this is not the first time that philosophers have mingled in martial matters. The very war which has been begun by the bad ambition of Russia, may be traced to the evil officiousness of no less a philosopher than Leibnitz. It was this celebrated man who first instigated a European monarch to seize upon a certain portion of the Turkish dominion, whereby to secure an all but universal supremacy.

The monarch was Louis XIV., to whom Leibnitz addressed himself, in a memorial, as to the wisest of sovereigns, most worthy to have imparted to him a project at once the most holy, the most just, and the most easy of accomplishment. Success, adds the philosopher, would secure to France the empire of the seas and of commerce, and make the French king the supreme arbiter of Christendom. Leibnitz at once names Egypt as the place to be seized upon; and after hinting what was necessary, by calling his majesty a “miracle of secresy,” he alludes to further achievements by stating of the one in question, that it would cover his name with an immortal glory, for having cleared, whether for himself or his descendants, “the route for exploits similar to those of Alexander.”

There is no country in the memorialist’s opinion the conquest of which deserves so much to be attempted. As to any provocation on the part of the Turkish sovereign of Egypt, he does not pause to advise the king even to feign having received cause of offence. The philosopher goes through a resumé of the history of Egypt, and the successive conquests that had been made of, as well as attempts against it, to prove that its possession was accounted of importance in all times; and he adds that its Turkish master was just then in such debility that France could not desire a more propitious opportunity for invasion. This argument shows that when the Czar Nicholas touched upon this nefarious subject, he not only was ready to rob this same “sick man,” the Turk, but he stole his arguments whereby to illustrate his opinions, and to prove that his sentiments were well-founded.

“By a single fortunate blow,” says Leibnitz, “empires may be in an instant overthrown and founded. In such wars are found the elements of high power and of an exalted glory.” It is unnecessary to repeat all the seductive terms which Leibnitz employs to induce Louis XIV. to set his chivalry in motion against the Turkish power. Egypt he calls “the eye of countries, the mother of grain, the seat of commerce.” He hints that Muscovy was even then ready to take advantage of any circumstance that might facilitate her way to the conquest of Turkey. The conquest of Egypt then was of double importance to France. Possessing that, France would be mistress of the Mediterranean, of a great part of Africa and Asia, and “the king of France could then, by incontestable right, and with the consent of the Pope, assume the title of Emperor of the East.” A further bait held out is, that in such a position he could “hold the pontiffs much more in his power than if they resided at Avignon.” He sums up by saying that there would be on the part of the human race, “an everlasting reverence for the memory of the great king to whom so many miracles were due!” “With the exception of the philosopher’s stone,” finally remarks the philosopher, “I know nothing that can be imagined of more importance than the conquest of Egypt.”

Leibnitz enters largely into the means to be employed, in order to insure success; among them is a good share of mendacity; and it must be acknowledged that the spirit of the memorial and its objects, touching not Egypt alone, but the Turkish empire generally, had been well pondered over by the Czar before he made that felonious attempt in which he failed to find a confederate.

The original of the memorial, which is supposed to have been presented to Louis XIV. just previous to his invasion of Holland—and, as some say, more with the intention of diverting the king from his attack on that country, than with any more definite object—was preserved in the archives of Versailles till the period of the great revolution. A copy in the handwriting of Leibnitz was, however, preserved in the Library at Hanover. Its contents were without doubt known to Napoleon when he was meditating that Egyptian conquest which Leibnitz pronounced to be so easy of accomplishment; a copy, made at the instance of Marshal Mortier for the Royal Library in Paris, is now in that collection.

The suggestion of Leibnitz, that the seat, if not of universal monarchy, at least of the mastership of Christendom, was in the Turkish dominions, has never been forgotten by Russia; and it is very possible that some of its seductive argument may have influenced the Czar before he impelled his troops into that war, which showed that Russia, with all its boasted power, could neither take Silistria nor keep Sebastopol.