The indifference paid by Marie Antoinette to conventional rules observed by those in high station exposed her to censure; but even her opponents have been forced to admit that one of her charms was the genuine kindness she often displayed to persons in a humble sphere of life. Thus, on one occasion, a strange accident happened. The stag, being closely pursued by the hounds during the royal hunt, leaped into an enclosure in which the owner was at work. The animal not seeing any means of escape became furious, ran at the peasant, and struck him two blows with its antlers, inflicting a dangerous wound. His wife, in a state of despair, rushed towards a group of sportsmen she saw at a distance—it was the King and his suite. She cried out for help, telling what had happened to her husband, and then fell down in a swoon. The King gave orders that she should be attended to, and after speaking kindly and compassionately rode away; but the Dauphiness, who had come up, stepped out of her carriage, ran to the woman, made her smell essenced water, which gave her relief, and presented her with all the money she had on her person.
On July 25, 1830, Charles X. of France signed the decrees which abolished the liberty of the press, and on the following day—although it was summertime—he went with the Dauphin to hunt the stag in the forest of Rambouillet. It proved to be an historic hunt, for “it seemed as if he had come to gaze at the scene whence his royalty was to be carried out to be buried.” By half-past nine the following night eight royal carriages and some hired coaches deposited at the gates of Rambouillet the fugitive King and a part of his terrified family; and thus came to pass the deposition of the last of the Bourbon kings who had reigned in France.
Frederick William I. of Prussia was an enthusiastic huntsman, and attached to the royal household were twelve huntsmen, who, besides their services in the chase, likewise waited at table. During several of his illnesses they had to sit up with him, and to amuse him during his sleepless nights with hunters’ stories. On the other hand, Frederick the Great denounced hunting as cruel, and he used frequently to say, “The butcher does not kill animals for his pleasure, but merely because human society requires them for food; whereas the hunter kills them only for his pleasure, which is detestable. The hunter, therefore, should be placed in the scale of society below the butcher.” Frederick William III., too, never had any taste for hunting, which he called “a cruel miserable pleasure”; and he even gave it as his opinion that his ancestor, Frederick William I., of whom he loved to speak, had been made so harsh and cruel by it.
Ferdinand V., the Catholic, who united the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon by his marriage with Isabella, cared for no other amusement save that of hunting, especially falconry; and Charles V. was fond of the chase. Maximilian II. found his chief pleasure in hunting, and he acquired the celebrated Prater—the Hyde Park of Vienna—which was originally a forest park with preserved game. In one of his letters to his brother-in-law, Albert of Bavaria, dated September 28, 1568, he writes: “I have several times wished from all my heart that you were with us in the Prater, where lots of fine stags have shown themselves, and particularly on Tuesday last, when I had a boar-hunt there, at which I bagged thirty head of game.”
Hunting the boar in the forests which surrounded the royal residence of Cintra was the great delight of Don Sebastian. We are told that he always dismounted to give the coup de grâce to the boar. Sometimes the wounded beast turned upon his assailant, but none of the cavaliers presumed, however desperate the struggle, to interfere between the King and his savage foe.
A Portuguese monarch who devoted much time to hunting was Alfonso IV., a pursuit he indulged in to the detriment of the State. But his presence one day being essential at Lisbon, he entered the council-chamber full of the adventures of the chase, with which he entertained the nobles present. After concluding his narrative, a nobleman of the first rank thus addressed him:—
“Courts and camps are allowed for kings, not woods and deserts. Even the affairs of private men suffer when recreation is preferred to business; but when the phantasies of pleasure engross the thoughts of a king, a whole nation is consigned to ruin. If your Majesty will attend to the wants and remove the grievances of your people, you will find them obedient subjects; if not, they will look out for another and a better king.”
Alfonso, in the transport of passion, retired, but soon returned, and said: “I perceive the truth of your remarks. He who will not execute the duties of a king cannot long have good subjects. Remember, from this day forward I am no longer Alfonso the Sportsman, but Alfonso, King of Portugal”—a resolve which he kept with the most rigid determination, becoming one of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs.
The only accomplishment, it is said, in which Alfonso VI. was a proficient was horsemanship. He once rode full-tilt at a savage bull in a meadow, but the brute so galled his royal assailant with his horns, that “he was unhorsed and nearly lost his life.” Amongst the wild acts of this wretched monarch, we are told how one night, returning from the chase, he charged two inoffensive citizens, sword in hand, and after riding over them would have despatched them, had not the grand huntsman interfered.
Charles III. of Spain was more attached to the sports of the field than the splendour of the monarchy; and it is said that no weather, however bad, could keep him at home. In addition to a most numerous retinue of persons belonging to his hunting establishment, several times a year all the idle fellows in the neighbourhood of Madrid were hired to scour the country, far and wide, and drive the wild boars, hares, and deer into a ring, where they passed before the royal family. Charles also kept in a diary a regular account of the victims to his skill. A short time before his death he boasted to a foreign ambassador that he had killed with his own hand 539 wolves and 5323 foxes. “So that, you see,” he said, with a smile, “my diversion has not been useless to my country.” And it is further said that so devoted was his Majesty to hunting that there were only three days in the year when he did not attend the chase.