Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

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.