The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

About the period, however, of which I write, several encounters had taken place, especially in Touraine, in the Beauvoisis, and the country about the Seine, between the chivalry and their insurgent villeyns, in which the former had been worsted, not so much by superior forces as by superior courage, discipline, and skill. And it came to be rumored far and near that there was one band, and that the fiercest and most cruel of all—consisting of above a thousand foot, spears, and crossbow-men, and led by a powerful man-at-arms, before whose lance everything was said to go down—at the head of nearly a hundred fully equipped lances, which was in no respect unequal to the best arrays of the nobility with their feudal vassals.

What was at first mere rumor, soon came to be accredited—soon came to be undoubted truth; for, emboldened by their successes from attacking the parties of chivalry in detail, as they fell upon them traversing the country in the vain hope of combinations, this great band now began to sit down before strong towns and fortified holds, to besiege them in due form of war, and were in every instance successful.

Their numbers, too, increased with their success, for every knight or man-at-arms who fell, or was taken prisoner, mounted and armed a peasant; and it was singular to observe with what skill and judgment the leader apportioned his best spoils to his best men: so that, developing his resources slowly—never admitting any man to enter his cavalry who had not approved himself a soldier, who could not ride well, and charge a lance fearlessly, nor enrolling any one among his footmen who was not well armed with a corslet or shirt-of-mail, and steel cap or sallet, with sword, dagger, and pike, or crossbow—he was soon at the head of two thousand excellent foot, and above three hundred lances, admirably mounted, who fought under his own immediate orders.

Who he was, no one knew, or conjectured. It was reported that his own men were unacquainted with his name, and that his face, when the vizor of his helmet was raised, was covered by a sable mask. How much of truth or falsehood there might be in these vague rumors, no man seemed to know; but it is certain that a mysterious and almost supernatural terror attached to the “Black Rider,” as he was universally termed, whenever he was spoken of—a terror which perhaps he took a secret pleasure in augmenting, either from motives of policy or of pride.

The strong suit of knight’s armor which he wore, of the best Milan steel, was black as night from the crest to the spur, without relief of any kind, or device on the shield, or heraldric crest on the burgonet. The plume which he wore on his casque was similar to those affixed in modern days to hearses; and another, its counterpart, towered between the ears of his charger, which was a coal-black barb, without one white hair in its glossy hide, barded with chamfront, poitrel, neck-plates, and bard proper, all of black steel, with funeral-housings of black cloth.

Such was the man who alone of the leaders of the Jacquerie seemed to make war on a system, acting according to the dictates of the soundest judgment rather than, like the others, by wantonness or whim; permitting no license, nor promiscuous individual pillaging, but causing all plunder to be brought together for the common weal—thus making war support war, according to the prescribed plan of the greatest of modern conquerors—and subsisting his men on the spoils of the powerful and rich, without trespassing in any wise on the property of the poor, whose favor it was his object to conciliate.

It came, too, to be understood, ere long, that his cruelty was no less systematic than his plundering. No wanton barbarity, no torturing, roast, crucifying, or the like, was ever perpetrated by his band; and of himself, it was notorious that, except in open warfare or in the heat of battle, he had never dealt a blow against a man, or laid a rude hand on a woman, of the hated caste of nobles. Still, neither man nor woman ever escaped his rancorous and premeditated vengeance.

Every male noble, of whatever age—gray-haired, or full-grown man, stripling, or child, or infant in the cradle—no sooner was he taken than he was hanged on the next tree if in the open field, or from the pinnacles of his own castle if within stone walls.

Every female of noble birth—and to these, though he never looked on them himself, nor was tempted by the charms of the fairest—was delivered at once to the mercies of his men, subjected to the last dishonor; and then, when life was intolerable to them, and death welcome, they were drowned in the nearest stream or lake, if in the open country, or cast from the battlements into the moat, if captured within the precincts of a fortalice.

So rigidly did he adhere to this last mode of execution, often carrying his victims along with the band for several days until he could find a suitable place for drowning them, that it was soon determined that he must have some secret motive, or strong vow, binding him to this strange course—the rather that there were many reasons for believing him to be a man naturally of a feeling and generous temper, hardened by circumstances into this vein of cold and adamantine cruelty.