They therefore had recourse to a high, or rather a deep, saddle, closely adhering to the thighs and loins, with large stirrups serving as supports to the feet. The several parts of the armour being splendidly ornamented, it followed that the saddles, which also were exposed to view, were no more neglected than other ornaments of the animal. Engraved and chased, they were also gilt and painted, and thus, with the shield, helped to distinguish, by the “devices” they bore, the armed warrior completely cased in his steel covering ([Figs. 78 to 81]).
As to stirrups, of which there certainly is no trace among the Greeks or the Romans, it may be said they were coeval with the invention of saddles. They made their appearance in the earliest days of the Merovingian dynasty; and if we accept the German etymology which the learned have offered (streben, to support one’s self), the name and the object was introduced by the Franks into Gaul. However that may be, they were no longer dispensed with, especially in war, and when the weight of armour rendered their use necessary. They were of course very large, very massive, and very clumsy in the days of chivalry. When they diminished in size and weight they were wrought with more care, and became objects of art, charged with ingenious ornaments, and embellished with engraving, chasing, and gilding.
Figs. 78 and 79.—Tournament Saddles, ornamented with Paintings, taken from the Armoury Real, Madrid. Sixteenth Century. (Communicated by M. Ach. Jubinal.)
In accordance with the opinion held by M. de la Varenne, we have already ascribed the disuse of private carriages to the contempt with which the Franks regarded a mode of conveyance deemed by them to be effeminate. But, following the same author, we must observe that a reason might also be discovered in the wretched condition into which, after the decline of the Romans, those magnificent roads formed by them in all their conquered provinces had fallen. In towns, moreover, the streets, narrow, crooked, and with no regular direction, were very frequently so many holes and quagmires. Philip Augustus I. had some of the streets of Paris paved in that lutèce[13] which already, at the time of the Roman conquest, had deserved the significant epithet of miry. The princes and the nobles who, as Molière humorously makes Mascarilla say, feared “to leave the impression of their shoes in mud,” and could not without difficulty drive about the towns in carriages, consequently had recourse to the horse or the mule. The ladies made use of them also; but very frequently, if not carried in litters, they rode on a pillion behind the horseman.
Fig. 80.—The Caparison of the Horse of Isabel the Catholic. (Communicated by M. Ach. Jubinal.)
In the thirteenth century chariots reappeared; but the fashion did not long prevail, for Philip the Fair discouraged them, in one of the clauses of his sumptuary ordinance of 1294, by declaring that “no citizen may have a chariot.”
The litter continued to be held in repute for processions; but queens frequently rode on horseback. Isabel of Bavaria rode on a beautiful palfrey, with her ladies and her maids also on horseback, on the occasion of her entering Paris to espouse Charles VI. And when Mary of England, who went to be married to Louis XII., made her entry into Abbeville, she also, as Robert de la Marck relates, was mounted on a palfrey, as were most of her ladies, “and the remainder in chariots; and the king, riding a large, prancing bay horse, came to receive his bride, with all the gentlemen of his household and of his guard on horseback.” The meeting of Henry VIII. and Francis I. in the camp of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, presented the most beautiful display that had ever been seen of caparisoned horses, decorated and furnished with unprecedented richness ([Fig. 82]).