The custom of cutting the tablecloth with a knife or dagger before a knight who had in any way degraded himself[895] is said, by some, to have been brought into use by Duguesclin, though others affirm that he only renewed an ancient habit. Much more severe inflictions, also, were destined for those who had dishonoured the Order to which they belonged by cowardice, treachery, or any other unmanly crime. The criminal, condemned to be stripped of his knighthood, was placed upon a scaffold, in the sight of the populace, while his armour was broken to pieces before his face. His shield reversed, with the coat-of-arms effaced, was dragged through the dirt, while the heralds proclaimed aloud his crime and his sentence. The king-at-arms then thrice demanded his name; and at each time, when the pursuivant replied, the king added, “A faithless and disloyal traitor!” A basin[896] of hot water was poured upon the culprit’s head, to wash away the very memory of his knighthood; and, being drawn on a hurdle to the church, he was covered with a pall, while the funeral prayers were pronounced over him, as one dead to honour and to fame.
Notwithstanding every means taken to uphold it, Chivalry gradually declined from the beginning of the fourteenth century. In England the long civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster called into action a thousand principles opposed to knightly courtesy and generosity. Many flashes of the chivalrous spirit blazed up from time to time, it is true; but the general character of those contentions was base and interested treachery on all parts.
The mean and avaricious spirit which seized upon Henry VII. in his latter years of course had its effect on his court and country; and the infamous extortions of his creatures Empson and Dudley, the ruin which they brought upon many of the nobility, and the disgust and terror which their tyranny spread through the land, served to check all those pageants and exercises which kept alive the sinking flame of Chivalry. Henry VIII., in the vigour of his youth, made vast efforts to give back to knighthood its ancient splendour; but the spirit had been as much injured as the external form, and though he could renew the one, he could not recall the other. The wavering tyranny of his old age also did more to extinguish the last sparks of knightly feeling, than his youth had done to revive the pomp of Chivalry. Then came the Reformation, and a new enthusiasm grew up through the land.
In Germany the reign of the Emperor Maximilian was the last in which Chivalry can be said to have existed. Charles V. reduced all things to calculation, and though the name of knighthood remained, it soon became nothing but a sound.
The land which had given birth to the institution cherished it long; and there its efforts were continually reawakened even in its decline. During the unhappy reign of Charles VI., France, torn by factions, each struggling for the sceptre of the insane monarch, saw Chivalry employed for the purposes of ambition alone. While all parties turned their arms against their fellow-countrymen, a stranger seized on the power for which they fought, and the English house of Lancaster seated itself on the throne of France. Charles VII. succeeded to a heritage of wars; but, apparently reckless, from the desperate state of his dominions, he yielded himself wholly to pleasure, without striking a blow for the recovery of his kingdom, till Joan of Arc recalled him to glory and himself. From that moment Chivalry again revived, and no period of French history presents knighthood under a brighter aspect than during the wars of Charles VII. At the same time, however, an institution was founded which soon changed the character of Chivalry, and in the end reduced it to a name.
The inconveniences attached to the knightly mode of warfare were many and striking; order and discipline were out of the question; and though courage did much, Charles VII. saw that courage well directed would do infinitely more. To establish, therefore, a body over which he might have some control, he raised a company of gen-d’armerie, which soon by its courage and its success drew into its own rank all the great and noble of the kingdom. Thus came a great change over the Order; knights became mere soldiers, and Chivalry was used as a machine. Louis XI. contributed still more to do away Chivalry, by depressing the nobility and founding a standing army of mercenary troops. Charles VIII. and Louis XII., by romantic wars in Italy, renewed the fire of the waning institution; and Francis I., the most chivalrous of kings, beheld it blaze up under his reign like the last flash of an expiring flame. He, however unwittingly aided to extinguish it entirely, and by extending knighthood to civilians, deprived it of its original character. The pomps and pageants, the exercises and the games, which had accompanied the Order from its early days, were now less frequent: popes had censured them as vain and cruel, and many kings had discountenanced them as expensive and dangerous: but the death of Henry II., from a wound received at a tournament, put an end to them in France; and from that time all the external ceremonies of Chivalry were confined to the reception of a knight into any of the royal Orders.
The distinctive spirit also had by this time greatly merged into other feelings. The valour was as much the quality of the simple soldier as of the knight; the courtesy had spread to society in general, and had become politeness; the gallantry had lost its refinement, and had deteriorated into debauchery. Faint traces of the lost institution appeared from time to time, especially in the wars of Henry IV. and the League. The artful and vicious policy of Catherine de Medicis did much to destroy it; the filthy effeminacy of Henry III. weakened it, in common with all noble feelings; and the iron rod of Richelieu struck at it as a remnant of the feudal power. Still a bright blaze of its daring valour shone out in Condé, a touch of its noble simplicity appeared in Turenne, but the false brilliancy of Louis XIV. completed its downfall; and Chivalry is only to be seen by its general effects on society.
Thus things fleet by us; and in reading of all the great and mighty deeds of which this book has given a slight and imperfect sketch, and looking on the multitudes of men who have toiled and struggled through dangers, difficulties, and horrors for the word GLORY, the empty echo of renown, or perhaps a worse reward, I rise as from a phantasmagoria where a world of strange and glittering figures have been passing before my eyes, changing with the rapidity of light, and each leaving an impression for memory, though the whole was but the shadow of a shade.