At all events, the word is the best general one for the dominant rank of the Middle Ages, as distinguished from the pacific peasant, and so delighting in battle that one of the most courteous barons of the fourteenth century tells a young knight who comes to him for general advice, that the moment war fails in any country, he must go into another.
“Et se la guerre est faillie,
Départie
Fay tóst de cellui païs;
N’arresté quoy que nul die.”
“And if the war has ended,
Departure
Make quickly from that country;
Do not stop, whatever anybody says to you.”[3]
But long before this class distinction was clearly established, the more radical one between pacific and warrior nations had shown itself cruelly in the history of Europe.