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.