“In Paris, four oxen, in pace soft and slow,
Drew the indolent monarch, when airing he’d go.”
“Chivalry,” wrote M. le Marquis de Varenne, “the exercises of which were the image of war, rendered horsemanship a new art always indispensable in the education of the nobility; and chevalier soon became synonymous with a man of good birth.” “The Book of Facts,” by the “Bon Chevalier Messire Jean le Maingre, called Baucicaut, Marshal of France,” written in the beginning of the fifteenth century, enumerates the exercises which a youth aspiring to the title of a gentleman had to undergo:—“They endeavoured to leap (sailler) upon a charger, fully armed; item, leaped, without placing the foot in the stirrup, on a charger in all its armour; item, leaped from the ground a-straddle on to the shoulders of a tall man on a large horse, seizing the man by the sleeve with one hand, without other assistance; item, placing one hand on the saddle-bow of a large charger, and the other near the ears, taking him by the mane, and from the level ground jumping to the other side (côté) of the charger.”
The Chevalier Bayard, while yet page to the Duke of Savoy, and only seventeen years of age, performed, as his historian relates, wonders in the meadows of Ainay, at Lyons, before King Charles VIII., “in leaping on his charger,” and by his management of it creating a favourable impression of his merits. This will suffice to show the estimation in which horsemanship was held. No one was regarded as a valiant knight until he had proved his prowess in jousts and tournaments ([Fig. 74]) in the rank of squire. Although his functions were essentially those of serving, a squire, who ranked higher than a page, was to the knight rather an auxiliary and a companion than a servant. It was his duty to carry the arms of the knight, to take charge of his table, his house, and his horses. On the field of battle he remained in his rear, ready to defend him, to lift him up if he were overthrown, and to provide him, when necessary, with another horse or other arms. He guarded the prisoners captured by the knight, and occasionally fought for him at his side.
The principal sign distinguishing knights from squires consisted in the material of which their spurs were made—of gold for the former, of silver for the latter. It is well known that, at the disastrous battle of Courtray, the Flemings collected after the action, from the slain, four thousand pairs of gold spurs; consequently, four thousand knights of the army of Philip the Fair had fallen.
Fig. 74.—A Knight entering the Lists. (From a Miniature in the “Tournois du Roi René.”)
In order to win his spurs (of gold)—an expression become proverbial—it was indispensable that one who aspired to the honour should perform some valiant deed, proving him worthy of being “dubbed,” or armed as a knight. The ceremony of admission commenced by presenting the spurs; and whosoever conferred the order of chivalry, were he king or prince, condescended to put on and fasten the spurs for the recipient. In pursuance of the same principle, when a knight, having committed a fault or any cowardly act, had incurred blame or correction, it was by deprivation of, or by changing his spurs, that his degradation commenced. For a slight offence a herald substituted silver spurs for those of gold, which lowered a knight to the grade of squire. But in a case of “forfeiture,” as it was termed, an executioner or a cook cut off the straps of his spurs, or they were struck off on a dunghill with an axe: infamy was the future portion of him who had been subjected to that public disgrace.
The privilege of wearing spurs was regarded as a mark of independence and authority; so that when a noble tendered faith and homage to his sovereign, he was obliged to take off his spurs in token of vassalage. In 816, ere chivalry had been instituted, an assembly of lords and bishops prohibited ecclesiastics from adopting the profane fashion of wearing spurs then prevailing among the higher classes of the clergy.
The use of the spur appears to date from the most ancient times. The origin of the word has been much disputed. From the time of Louis le Débonnaire it was called spuors, which has become sporen in Germany, sperane in Italian, spur in English, éperon in French. The Latins called it calcar (which originally signified cock’s spur), doubtless from the form first given to the spur. That form has strangely varied during centuries. The oldest known shape is that of the spur found in the tomb of Queen Brunehaut, who died in 613, and which is simply like a skewer. This seems to have long continued to be the form; but, from the commencement of the thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the spur is seen in the form of a rose, or of a star with a turning rowel, and was mostly fashioned in a very rich and delicate manner. At the period when horses were clad in steel or leather, the spurs were necessarily very long, in order to reach the animal’s flanks ([Figs. 75] and [76]). The spurs of Godfrey of Bouillon, which have been preserved (their authenticity is more or less questionable), are in that style. In the reign of Charles VII. the young nobles wore, rather for show than for use, spurs the rowel of which was as large as the hand, and fixed at the end of a metal stem half a foot long.
If, therefore, from time immemorial every mounted horse “felt the spur,” there was at least a period when every sort of spur could not be indiscriminately applied to the flanks of each individual of the equine race. “There are,” says Brunetto Latini, a writer of the thirteenth century, in his “Treasury of all Things”—a sort of encyclopædia of the age—“there are horses of several kinds: chargers, or tall horses, for the combat, whence the expression, ‘mounting the high horse;’ others, for gentle exercise, use palfreys, which were also called amblers and hackneys; others employ pack-horses, courtants (cropped horses), to carry a load (somme).” Somme here signifies a burden, and this, which we now call baggage, consisted of spare arms and hauberk, which a knight was careful to take with him when he went to the wars. Mares and bât-horses (horses carrying the bât, or load) were reserved for agriculture and other field-purposes; and it was clearly on that account that a knight was not allowed to ride them. To make a knight ride upon a mare was, like the loss of his spurs, one of the most degrading punishments that could be inflicted on him, and thenceforth “any one who regarded his own honour would no more have touched that disgraced knight than a shaven idiot (leper).”