Chapter III: Part 3

“Won all their ladies’ hearts in fights,
And cuts whole giants into fritters,
To put them into amorous twitters;
Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield,
Until their gallants were half killed:
But when their bones were drubbed so sore
They durst not win one combat more,
The ladies’ hearts began to melt,
Subdued by blows their lovers felt.
So Spanish heroes with their lances
At once wound bulls and ladies’ fancies.”

However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his lady, the latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his homage to her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country’s honor or his own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Bertrand de Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder blows when he was a bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and still more after he had wed the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all care for honor in the field, and had no delight but in the society of his spouse. The lady, however, was resolved that neither his sword nor his reputation should acquire rust through any fault or beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his home-keeping propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of his bachelor-days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked him out of her bower and into his saddle.

The English did not profit by the lady’s eloquence, for our forefathers never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to deal with than Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them; and dying, he had the sympathy of those who had been his foes. Charles V. made him Constable of France, and appointed him a grave at the foot of his own royal tomb. De Guesclin would never have been half the man he was but for the good sense of his wife Tiphania.

There are many instances in romance which would seem to imply, that so strained was the sentiment which bound knights to respect ladies, it compelled them not to depart therefrom even in extreme cases, involving lightness of conduct and infidelity. The great northern chiefs, who were a sort of very rough knights in their way, were, however, completely under the distaff. Their wives could divorce themselves at will. Thus, in Erysbiggia Saga we read of Borck, an Icelandic chief, who, bringing home a guest whom his wife not only refused to welcome, but attempted to stab, administered such correction to his spouse in return, that the lady called in witnesses and divorced herself on the spot. Thereupon the household goods were divided among them, and the affair was rapidly and cheaply managed without the intervention of an Ecclesiastical Court. More modern chivalry would not have tolerated the idea of correcting even a faithless, much less a merely angry spouse. Indeed, the amatory principle was quite as strong as the religious one; and in illustration thereof, it has been remarked that the knight must have been more than ordinarily devout who had God on his _right_ hand (the place of honor), and his lady on his _left_.

To _ride at the ring_ was then the pleasantest pastime for knights; and ladies looked on and applauded the success, or laughed at the failures. The riding, without attempting to carry off the ring, is still common enough at our fairs, for children; but in France and Germany, it is seriously practised in both its simple and double forms, by persons of all ages, who glide round to the grinding of an organ, and look as grave as if they were on desperate business.

It is an undoubted matter of fact, that although a knight was bound to be tender in his gallantry, there were some to be found whose wooing was of the very roughest; and there were others who, if not rough, were rascally.

The old Rue des Lombards, in Paris, was at one time occupied exclusively by the “professed pourpoint-makers,” as a modern tailor might say. They carried on a flourishing trade, especially in times when men, like Bassompierre, thought nothing of paying, or promising to pay, fourteen thousand crowns for a pourpoint. When I say the street was thus occupied exclusively, I must notice an exception. There were a few other residents in it, the Jew money-lenders or usurers; and when I hear the old French proverb cited “patient as a Lombard,” I do not know whether it originally applied to the tailors or the money-lenders, both of whom were extensively cheated by their knightly customers. Here is an illustration of it, showing that all Jessicas have not been as lucky as Shylock’s daughter, and that some Jews have been more cruelly treated than Shylock’s daughter’s father--whom I have always considered as one of the most ill-used of men.

In the Rue des Lombards there dwelt a wealthy Jew, who put his money out at interest, and kept his daughter under lock and key at home. But the paternal Jew did not close his shutters, and the Lombard street Jessica, sitting all day at the window, attracted the homage of many passers-by. These were chiefly knights who came that way to be measured for pourpoints; and no knight was more attracted by the black eyes of the young lady in question, than the Chevalier Giles de Pontoise. That name indeed is one of a celebrated hero of a burlesque tragedy, but the original knight was “_my_ Beverley.”

Giles wore the showiest pourpoint in the world; for which he had obtained long credit. It struck him that he would call upon the Jew to borrow a few hundred pistoles, and take the opportunity to also borrow the daughter. He felt sure of succeeding in both exploits; for, as he remarked, if he could not pay the money he was about to borrow, he could borrow it of his more prudent relatives, and so acquit himself of his debt. With regard to the lady, he had serenaded her, night after night, till she looked as ready to leap down to him as the Juliets who played to Barry’s Romeo;--and he had sung “Ecco ridente il sole,” or what was then equivalent to it, accompanied by his guitar, and looking as ridiculous the while, without being half so silvery-toned as Rubini in Almaviva, warbling his delicious nonsense to Rosina. Our Jew, like old Bartolo, was destined to pay the musician.

Giles succeeded in extracting the money required from the usurer, and he had like success in inducing the daughter to trust to his promises. He took the latter to Pontoise, deceived her by a mock-marriage, and spent all that he had borrowed from the father, in celebrating his pretended nuptials with the daughter. There never was a more recreant knight than Giles de Pontoise.

However, bills will become due, if noble or simple put their names to them, and the Jew claimed at once both his debt and his daughter. He failed in obtaining his money, but the lady he carried off by violence, she herself exhibiting considerable reluctance to leave the Château de Pontoise for the paternal dungeon in the Rue des Lombards.

This step brought Giles to a course of reflection. It was not of that quality which his confessor would have recommended, but rather of a satanic aspect. “In the usurer’s house,” thought Giles, “live the tailor to whom I am indebted for my pourpoint, the Jew who holds my promise to pay, and the pretty daughter of whom I have been so unjustly deprived. I will set fire to the house. If I burn tailor, money-lender, and the proofs of my liabilities, I shall have done a good night’s work, if I therewith can carry off little Jessica.”

Thereupon, Giles went down to the Rue des Lombards, and with such aid as was then easily purchasable, he soon wrapped the Jew’s dwelling in flames. Shylock looked to his papers and money-bags. The knight groped through the smoke and carried off the daughter. The Jew still held the promissory note of the Knight of Pontoise, whose incendiary act, however, had destroyed half of one side of the Rue des Lombards. Therewith had perished reams of bonds which made slaves of chevaliers to Jew money-lenders. “_Sic vos non vobis_,” thought Giles, “but at all events, if he has my bill, I have possession of Jessica.”

The Jew held as much to his daughter as to his ducats. He persecuted the pretended husband with a pertinacity which eventually overcame Giles de Pontoise. A compromise was effected. The knight owed the usurer three thousand golden crowns, and had stolen from him his only daughter. Giles agreed to surrender his “lady,” on condition that the money-lender should sign an acquittance of the debt. This done, the Jew and daughter walked homeward, neither of them well satisfied with the result of their dealings with a knight.

The burnt-out Lombarder turned round at the threshold of the knight’s door, with a withering sneer, like Edmund Kean’s in Shylock when he was told to make haste and go home, and begin to be a Christian. “It is little but sorrow I get by you, at all events,” said the Jew to the Chevalier.

“Do you make so light of your grandson?” asked Giles. And with this Parthian dart he shut his door in the face of the trio who were his victims.

This knight was a victimizer; but below we have an illustration of knights victimized through too daring affection.

The great Karloman may be said to have been one of those crowned knights who really had very little of the spirit of chivalry in him, with respect to ladies. He married, successfully, two wives, but to neither did he allow the title of Empress. It is, however, not with his two wives, but his two daughters and their chevaliers _par amours_, with whom we have now to do.

In the Rue de la Harpe, in Paris, may be seen the remains, rather than the ruins, of the old building erected by the Emperor Julian, and which was long known by the name of the “old palace.” It served as a palace about a thousand years and half a century ago, when one night there drew up before it a couple of knights, admirably mounted, and rather roughly escorted by a mob, who held up their lanterns to examine the riders, and handled their pikes as if they were more ready to massacre the knights than to marshal them.

All the civility they received on this February night was of a highly equivocal nature. They were admitted, indeed, into the first and largest court of the palace, but the old seneschal locked and barred the gate behind them. An officer too approached to bid them welcome, but he had hardly acquitted himself of his civil mission when he peremptorily demanded of them the surrender of their swords.

“We are the King’s own messengers,” said one of the knights, rather puzzled at the reception vouchsafed to them;--“and we have, moreover, a despatch to deliver, written in our gracious master’s own hand,” remarked the second knight.

“Vive Louis le Debonnaire!” exclaimed the seneschal; “how fares it with our sovereign?”

“As well as can be,” was the reply, “with a monarch who has been engaged six whole weeks at Aix, in burying his father and predecessor, Charlemagne. Here is his missive.” This missive was from Louis the Frolicsome, or Louis the Good-Natured, or Louis of Fair Aspect. He was morose, wittily disposed, and ill-featured;--but then the poet-laureate had given him his fine name; and the king wore it as if it had been fairly won. He had clipped, shaved, and frocked, all his natural brothers, and then shut them up in monasteries. He had no more respect for treaties than he had for Mohammed, and by personal example he taught perjury and rebellion to those whom he cruelly punished when they imitated their exalted instructor. The seneschal perused the letter addressed to him by his royal correspondent, and immediately requested the two knights to enter the palace itself.

They were ushered into a lofty-arched apartment on the ground floor, which ordinarily served as an ante-room for the guards on duty; it was for the moment, however, empty. They who have visited the old Palais de Thermes, as it is called, have, doubtlessly, remarked and admired this solid relic of the past.

After entering, the seneschal once more lifted the despatch to the flambeau, read it through, looked at the seal, then at the knights, coughed uneasily, and began to wear an air of dislike for some duty imposed upon him. He repeated, as if he were learning by rote, the names Raoul de Lys and Robert de Quercy. “Those are our names,” observed the first; “we have ridden hither by the king’s orders to announce his coming; and having done so, let us have fire and food, lest we be famished and frozen before he arrives.”

“Hem!” muttered the seneschal, “I am extremely sorry; but, according to this letter, you are my prisoners, and till to-morrow you must remain in this apartment;” and, seeing them about to remonstrate, he added, “You will be quite at liberty here, except, of course, that you can’t get out; you will have separate quarters to-morrow.”

It was in vain that they inquired the reason for their detention, the nature of the charge alleged against them, or what they had further to expect. The seneschal dryly referred them to the monarch. He himself knew nothing more than his orders, and by them he was instructed to keep the two friends in close confinement till the sovereign’s arrival. “On second thoughts,” said the seneschal, “I must separate you at once. There is the bell in the tower of St. Jacques ringing midnight, and to-morrow will be upon us, before its iron tongue has done wagging. I really must trouble one of you gentlemen to follow me.” The voice was not so civil as the words, and after much parleying and reluctance, the two friends parted. Robert bade Raoul be of good cheer; and Raoul, who was left behind, whispered that it would be hard, indeed, if harm was to come to them under such a roof.

The roof, however, of this royal palace, looked very much like the covering of a place in which very much harm might be very quietly effected. But there were dwelling there two beings who might have been taken for spirits of good, so winning, so natural, and so loveable were the two spirits in question. They were no other than the two daughters of Charlemagne, Gisla and Rotrude. The romancers, who talk such an infinite deal of nonsense, say of them that their sweet-scented beauty was protected by the prickles of principle. The most rapid of analysers may see at once that this was no great compliment to the ladies. It was meant, however, to be the most refined flattery; and the will was accepted for the deed.

Now, the two knights loved the two ladies, and if they had _not_, neither Father Daniel nor Sainte Foix could have alluded to their amorous history; nor Father Pasquale, of the Convent of the Arminians in Venice, have touched it up with some of the hues of romance, nor Roger de Beauvoir have woven the two together, nor unworthy ægomet have applied it to the illustration of daring lovers.

These two girls were marvellously high-spirited. They had been wooed by emperors; but feeling no inclination to answer favorably to the wooing, Charlemagne generously refused to put force upon their affections, and bade them love only where their hearts directed them. This “license” gave courage to numberless nobles of various degrees, but Rotrude and Gisla said nay to all their regular advances. The Princesses were, in fact, something like Miss Languish, thought love worth nothing without a little excitement, and would have considered elopement as the proper preceder of the nuptial ceremony. Their mother, Hildegarda, was an unexceptional woman, but, like good Queen Charlotte, who let her daughters read Polly Honeycombe as well as Hannah More, she was a little confused in the way she taught morals, and the young Princesses fell in love, at the first opportunity, with gallant gentlemen of--as compared with princesses--rather low degree. In this respect, there is a parallel between the house of Karloman and some other houses of more modern times.

Louis le Debonnaire had, as disagreeable brothers will have, an impertinent curiosity respecting his sisters’ affairs. He was, here, the head of his family, and deemed himself as divinely empowered to dispose of the hearts of these ladies, as of the families and fortunes of his people. He had learned the love-passages that had been going on, and he had hinted that when he reached the old palace in Paris, he would make it as calmly cold as a cloister, and that there were disturbed hearts there, which should be speedily restored to a lasting tranquillity. The young ladies did not trouble themselves to read the riddle of a brother who was for ever affecting much mystery. But they prepared to welcome his arrival, and seemed more than ordinarily delighted when they knew that intelligence of his approaching coming had been brought by the two knights then in the castle.

Meanwhile, Raoul de Lys sat shivering on a stone bench in the great guard-room. He subsequently addressed himself to a scanty portion of skinny wild boar, very ill-cooked; drank, with intense disgust, part of a flask of hydromel of the very worst quality; and then having gazed on the miniature of Rotrude, which he took from beneath the buff jerkin under his corslet, he apostrophized it till he grew sleepy, upon which he blew out his lamp, and threw himself on an execrably hard couch. He was surprised to find that he was not in the dark. There was very good reason for the contrary.

As he blew out his lamp, a panel in the stone wall glided noiselessly open, and Robert de Quercy appeared upon the threshold--one hand holding a lamp, the other leading a lady. The lady was veiled; and she and the knight hurriedly approached Raoul, who as hurriedly rushed forward to meet them. He had laid his armor by; and they who recollect Mr. Young in Hotspur, and how _he_ looked in tight buff suit, before he put his armor on, may have some idea of the rather ridiculous guise in which Raoul appeared to the lady. But she was used to such sights, and had not time to remark it even had she not been so accustomed.

Raoul observing that Robert was accompanied only by Gisla, made anxious inquiry for Rotrude. Gisla in a few words told him that her sister would speedily be with them, that there was certain danger, even death, threatening the two cavaliers, and probable peril menacing--as Gisla remarked, with a blush--those who loved them. The King, she added, had spoken angrily of coming to purify the palace, as she had heard from Count Volrade, who appears to have been a Polonius, as regards his office, with all the gossip, but none of the good sense, of the old chamberlain in Denmark.

“Death to us!” exclaimed Robert. “Accursed be the prince who transgresses the Gospel admonition, not to forget his own or his father’s friends.” “We were the favored servants of Charlemagne,” said Raoul. “We were of his closest intimacy,” exclaimed Robert. “Never,” interrupted Raoul, “did he ascend his turret to watch the stars, without summoning us, his nocturnal pages, as he called us, to his side.” “He dare not commit such a crime; for the body of Charlemagne is scarcely sealed down in its tomb; and Louis has not a month’s hold of the sceptre.”

“He holds it firmly enough, however, to punish villany,” exclaimed Louis himself, as he appeared in the doorway leading to a flight of stone stairs by which Gisla had indicated the speedy appearance of Rotrude.

And here I would beseech my readers to believe that if the word “tableau!” ought to be written at this situation, and if it appears to them to be too melo-dramatic to be natural, _I_ am not in fault. I refer them to all the histories and romances in which this episode in knightly story is told, and in all they will find that Louis makes his appearance exactly as I have described, and precisely like Signor Tamburini in the great scene of Lucrezia Borgia.

Louis having given expression to his startling bit of recitative, dragged forward Rotrude, whom he had held behind him, by the wrist. The background was occupied by four guards, wearing hoods; and I can not think of them without being reminded of those same four old guards, with M. Desmousseaux at their head, who always represented the Greek or Roman armies upon the stage of the Théâtre Français, when Talma was the Nero or the Sylla, the Orestes or the Capitolinus of the night.

With some allusion to Rotrude as a sacred dove, and to himself as a bird-catcher, Louis handed his sister to a stone bench, and then grew good-natured in his remarks. This sudden benevolence gave a chill to the entire company. They turned as pale as any Russian nobleman to whom Nicholas was extraordinarily civil.

“We know the winding passages of the palace of Thermes,” said Louis, laughingly, “as well as our sisters; and I have not gone through them to-night for the purpose of terrifying the sister whom I encountered there, or the other sister whom I see here. I am a kind-hearted brother, and am marvellously well-disposed. I need only appeal to these four gentlemen of my guard, who will presently take off their hoods, and serve as witnesses this night in a little ceremony having reference to my dear Rotrude.”

“A ceremony! this night!” exclaimed the two princesses.

“Ay, by the nails of the cross! Two ceremonies. You shall both be married forthwith. I will inaugurate my reign by a double wedding, here in the old palace of Thermes. You, Gisla, shall espouse Robert, Count de Quercy, and you, Rotrude, shall wed with Raoul, Baron de Lys. You might have aimed higher, but they are gallant gentlemen, friends of my deceased sire; and, by my sooth, the nuptials shall not lack state and ceremony! Here are our wedding-gifts to the bridegrooms.”

He pointed to two showy suits of armor, the pieces of which were carried by the four guards. The knights were in a dream of delight. They vowed eternal gratitude to the most noble of emperors and unparalleled of brothers.

“We have no great faith in human gratitude,” said Louis, “and shall not expect from you more than is due. And you, my sisters,” added he, “retire for awhile; put on what you will; but do not tarry here at the toilette of men-at-arms, like peasant-girls looking at the equipping of two pikemen.”

The two princesses withdrew; and there would have been a smile upon their lips, only that they suspected their brother. Hoping the best, however, they kissed the tips of their rosy fingers to the knights, and tripped away, like two pets of the ballet. They were true daughters of their sire, who reckoned love-passages as even superior to stricken fields. He was not an exemplary father, nor a faithful husband. His _entourage_ was not of the most respectable; and in some of his journeys he was attended by the young wife of one of his own cavaliers, clad in cavalier costume. It was a villanously reprobate action, not the less so that Hermengarde was living. The mention of it will disgust every monarch in Europe who reads my volume; and I am sure that it will produce no such strong sensation of reproof anywhere as in the bosom of an admirable personage “over the water.”

The two princesses, then, had not so much trouble from the prickles of principle as the romances told of them. But, considering the example set them by their imperial father, they were really very tolerable princesses, under the circumstances.

“Don your suits, gentlemen!” exclaimed the king.

The four guards advanced with the separate pieces of armor, at which the two knights gazed curiously for a moment or two, as two foxes might at a trap in which lay a much-desired felicity. They were greatly delighted, yet half afraid. The monarch grew impatient, and the knights addressed themselves at once to their adornment. They put aside their own armor, and with the assistance of the four mute gentlemen-at-arms they fitted on the _brassards_ or arm-pieces, which became them as though the first Milainer who ever dressed knight had taken their measure. With some little trouble they were accoutred, less as became bridegrooms than barons going to battle; and this done, they took their seats, at a sign from the king, who bade the four gentlemen come to an end with what remained of the toilette.

The knights submitted, not without some misgiving, to the services of the four mysterious _valets_! and, in a short time, the preparations were complete, even to the helmet with the closed visor. This done, the knights took their places, or were led rather to two high-backed oaken chairs. As soon as they were seated there, the four too-officious attendants applied their hands to the closed head-pieces; and in a very brief space the heads of the cavaliers sunk gently upon their breasts, as if they were in deep slumber or as deep meditation.

Two o’clock rang out from the belfry of St. Jacques, as the two brides entered. The king pointed with a smile to the bridegrooms, and left the apartment with his attendants. The ladies thought that the lovers exhibited little ardor or anxiety to meet them; for they remained motionless on their oaken chairs. The daughters of Charlemagne advanced, half-timidly, half-playfully; and, at length, finding the knights not disposed to address them, gently called to each by his name. Raoul and Robert continued motionless and mute. They were in fact dead. They had been strangled or suffocated in a peculiar sort of armor, which had been sent to Charlemagne from Ravenna, in return for a jewelled vase presented by that emperor to the ancient city. “In 1560,” says Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, himself quoting an Italian manuscript, there were several researches made in this part of the palace of Thermes, one result of which was the discovery of a ‘casque à soufflet,’ all the openings in which could be closed in an instant by a simple pressure of the finger on a spring. At the same instant the lower part of the neck-piece tightened round the throat, and the _patient_ was disposed of. “In this helmet,” adds the author, “was found the head of a man, well preserved, with beard and teeth admirable for their beauty.” I think, however, that in this matter M. de Beauvoir proves a little too much.

Father Daniel, in his history notices the vengeance of Louis le Debonnaire against two young nobles who were, reputedly, the lovers of Gisla and Rotrude. The details of the act of vengeance have been derived from an Italian source; and it is said that an Italian monk, named Pagnola, had some prominent part in this dreary drama, impelled thereto by a blow dealt to him at the hands of Raoul, by way of punishment for some contemptuous phrases which the monk had presumed to apply to the great Charlemagne.

Love and sword-blades seem to have been as closely connected as “Trousseaux et Layettes,” which are always named together in the shop-fronts of a Parisian “Lingere.” There was once an ample field for the accommodation of both the sentiments of love and bravery in the old Chaussée d’Antin, when it was merely a _chaussée_ or highway, and not the magnificent street it now is. It was, down even to comparatively modern times, the resort of lovers of every degree, from dukes and duchesses to common dragoons and dairymaids. They were not always, however, under this strict classification.

But whatever classification or want of it there may have been, there was a part of the road which was constantly the scene of bloody encounters. This was at the narrow bridge of Arcans. Here if two cavaliers met, each with a lady at his side, it was a matter of honor not to give way. On the contrary, the latter was to be forced at the point of the sword. While the champions were contending, the ladies would scarcely affect to faint; they would stand aside, remain unconcerned on their jennets or mules, till the two simpletons had pinked one another; or lounge in their cumbrous coaches till the lovers limped back to them.

It was on this bridge, of which no vestige now remains, not even in a museum, that the Count de Fiesque one evening escorting Madame de Lionne, encountered M. de Tallard, who was chaperoning Louison d’Arquien. Each couple was in a carriage, and neither would make way for the other to pass. Thereupon the two cavaliers leaped from their coaches, drew their swords, planted their feet firmly on the ground, and began slashing at each other like two madmen, to the great delight of a large crowd who enjoyed nothing so much as the sight of two noble gentlemen cutting one another’s throats.

The ladies, meanwhile, flourished their handkerchiefs from their respective carriage-windows, for the encouragement of their champions. Now and then each laughed aloud when her particular friend had made a more than ordinary successful thrust; and each was generous enough to applaud any especial dexterity, even when her own lover thereby bloodily suffered. The two foolish fellows only poked at each other with the more intensity. And when they had sufficiently slit their pourpoints and slashed their sleeves, the ladies, weary of waiting any longer for a more exciting denouement, rushed between the combatants, like the Sabine ladies between the contending hosts; each gentleman gallantly kissed the lady who did not belong to him; and the whole four gayly supped together, as though they had been the best friends in the world.

This incident fairly brings us to the questions of duelling and death, as illustrated by chivalry.

DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL.

“Le duel, ma mie, ne vaut pas un duo, de Lully.”
CRISPIN MOURANT.

As an effect of chivalry, duelling deserves some passing notice. Its modern practice was but an imitation of chivalric encounters, wherein the issue of battle was left to the judgment of God.

Bassompierre dates the origin of duelling (in France) from the period of Henri II. Previous to that king’s reign, the quarrels of gentlemen were determined by the decree of the constable and marshals of France. These only allowed knightly encounters in the lists, when they could not of themselves decide upon the relative justice and merits of the dispute.

“I esteem him no gentleman,” said Henri one day, “who has the lie given him, and who does not chastise the giver.” It was a remark lightly dropped, but it did not fall unheeded. The king in fact encouraged those who resorted, of their own will, to a bloody arbitrament of their dissensions; and duelling became so “fashionable,” that even the penalty of death levelled against those who practised it, was hardly effectual enough to check duellists. At the close of the reign of Henri IV. and the commencement of that of Louis XIII. the practice was in least activity; but after the latter period, as the law was not rigorously applied, the foolish usage was again revived; and sanguinary simpletons washed out their folly in blood.

But duelling has a more remote origin than that ascribed to it by Bassompierre. Sabine, in his “Dictionary of Duelling,” a recently-published American work, dates its rise from the challenge of the Philistine accepted by David! However this may be, it is a strange anomaly that an advocate for the savage and sinful habit of duelling has appeared in that France which claims to be the leader of civilization. Jules Janin has, among his numberless _feuilletons_ published three reasons authorizing men to appeal to single combat. The above M. Janin divides the world into three parts--a world of cravens; a world in which opinion is everything; and a world of hypocrites and calumniators. He considers the man who has not the heart to risk his life in a duel, as one lost in the world of cravens, because the legion of cowards by whom he is surrounded will assume courage at his expense.

Further, according to our gay neighbor’s reasoning, the man is lost in this world, in which opinion is everything, who will not seek to obtain a good opinion at the sword’s point.

Again, says M. Janin, the man is lost in this world of hypocrites and calumniators who will not demand reparation, sword in hand, for the calumnies and malicious reports to which he has been exposed. It would be insulting to the common sense of my readers to affect to point out to them the rottenness of reasons like these. They could only convince such men as Buckingham and Alfieri, and others in circumstances like theirs; Buckingham after killing Lord Shrewsbury at Barnes, and pressing the head of Lady Shrewsbury on his bloody shirt; and Alfieri, who, after a vile seduction, and very nearly a terrible murder in defence of it, went home and slept more peacefully than he had ever slept before: “dopo tanto e si stranie peripizie d’un sol giorno, non ho dormito mai d’un sonno piu tenace e piu dolce.” Alfieri would have agreed with M. Janin, that in duelling lay the safeguard of all that remains to us of civilization. But how comes it then that civilization is thus a wreck, since duelling has been so long exercising a protective influence over it?

However few, though dazzling, were the virtues possessed by the chivalrous heroes of ancient history, it must be conceded to them, that they possessed that of valor, or a disregard of life, in an eminent degree. The instances of cowardice are so rare that they prove the general rule of courage; yet these men, with no guides but a spurious divinity and a false philosophy, never dreamed of having recourse to the duel, as a means of avenging a private wrong. Marius, indeed, was once challenged, but it was by a semi-barbarous Teutonic chief, whom the haughty Roman recommended, if he were weary of his life to go and hang himself. Themistocles, too, whose wisdom and courage the most successful of our modern gladiators may admire and envy, when Eurybiades threatened to give him a blow, exclaimed, “Strike, but hear me!” Themistocles, it must be remembered, was a man of undaunted courage, while his jealous provoker was notorious for little else but his extreme cowardice.

But, in truth, there have been brave men in all countries, who have discouraged this barbarous practice. A Turkish pacha reminded a man who had challenged a fellow Spahi, that they had no right to slay one another while there were foes to subdue. The Dauphin of Viennois told the Count of Savoy, who had challenged him, that he would send the count one of his fiercest bulls, and that if the count were so minded, his lordship of Savoy might test his prowess against an antagonist difficult to overcome. The great Frederick would not tolerate the practice of duelling in his army; and he thoroughly despised the arguments used for its justification. A greater man than Frederick, Turenne, would never allow himself to be what was called “concerned in an affair of honor.” Once, when the hero of Sintzheim and the Rhine had half drawn his sword to punish a disgusting insult, to which he had been subjected by a rash young officer, he thrust it back into the sheath, with the words: “Young man, could I wipe your blood from my conscience with as much ease as I can this filthy proof of your folly from my face, I would take your life upon the spot.”

Even the chivalrous knights who thought duelling a worthy occupation for men of valor, reduced opportunities for its practice to a very small extent. Uniting with the church, they instituted the _Savior’s Truce_, by which duels were prohibited from Wednesday to the following Monday, because, it was said, those days had been consecrated by our Savior’s Passion. This, in fact, left only Tuesday as a clear day for settling quarrels by force of arms.

There probably never existed a mortal who was opposed by more powerful or more malignant adversaries than St. Augustin was. His great enemies the Donatists never, it is true, challenged him to any more dangerous affray than a war of literary controversy. But it was in answer to one of their missiles hurled against him, in the form of an assertion, that the majority of authors was on their side, he aptly told them that it was the sign of a cause destitute of truth when only the erring authority of many men could be relied on.

The Norman knights or chiefs introduced the single combat among us. It is said they were principally men who had disgraced themselves in the face of the enemy, and who sought to wipe out the disgrace in the blood of single individuals. It is worthy of remark too, that when king and sovereign princes had forbidden duelling, under the heaviest penalties, the popes absolved the monarchs from their vows when the observance of them would have put in peril the lives of offending nobles who had turned to Rome in their perplexity, and who had gained there a reputation for piety, as Hector did, who was esteemed so highly religious, for no other reason than that he had covered with rich gifts the altar of the father of Olympus.

Supported by the appearance that impunity was to be purchased at Rome, and encouraged by the example of fighting-cardinals themselves, duelling and assassination stalked hand in hand abroad. In France alone, in the brief space of eighteen years, four thousand gentlemen were killed in _rencontres_, upon quarrels of the most trivial nature. In the same space of time, not less than fourteen thousand pardons for duelling were granted. In one province alone, of France, in Limousin, one hundred and twenty gentlemen were slain in six months--a greater number than had honorably fallen in the same period, which was one of war, in defence of the sovereign, their country, and their homes. The term _rencontre_ was used in France to elude the law. If gentlemen “met” by accident and fought, lawyers pleaded that this was not a _duel_, which required preliminaries between the two parties. How frequent the _rencontres_ were, in spite of the penalty of death, is thus illustrated by Victor Hugo, in his _Marion Delorme_:--

“Toujours nombre de duels, le trois c’était d’Angennes
Contre d’Arquien, pour avoir porté du point de Gènes.
Lavarde avec Pons s’est rencontré le dix,
Pour avoir pris à Pons la femme de Sourdis.
Sourdis avec Dailly pour une du théâtre
De Mondorf. Le neuf, Nogent avec Lachâtre,
Pour avoir mal écrit trois vers de Colletet.
Gorde avec Margaillan, pour l’heure qu’il était.
D’Himière avec Gondi, pour le pas à l’église.
Et puis tous les Brissac avec tous les Soubise,
A propos d’un pari d’un cheval contre un chien.
Enfin, Caussade avec Latournelle, pour rien.
Pour le plaisir, Caussade a tué Latournelle.

Jeremy Taylor denounced this practice with great earnestness, and with due balancing of the claims of honor and of Christianity. “Yea; but flesh and blood can not endure a blow or a disgrace. Grant that too; but take this into the account: flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

What man could endure for honor’s sake, however, is shown in the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis, who, in the seventeenth century, was asked to be second to a friend, when duels were punishable by death to all parties concerned in them. The friend of De Pontis pressed it on him, as a custom always practised among friends; and his captain and lieutenant-colonel did not merely permit, but ordered him to do what his friend desired.

Boldly as many knights met death, there were not a few who did their best, and that very wisely, to avoid “the inevitable.”

Valorously as some chevaliers encountered deadly peril, the German knights, especially took means to avoid the grisly adversary when they could. For this purpose, they put on the _Noth-hemd_ or shirt of need. It was supposed to cover the wearer with invulnerability. The making of the garment was a difficult and solemn matter. Several maidens of known integrity assembled together on the eve of the Nativity, and wove and sewed together this linen garment, in the name of the devil! On the bosom of the shirt were worked two heads; one was long-bearded and covered with the knightly helmet, the other was savage of aspect, and crowned like the king of demons. A cross was worked on either side. How this could save a warrior from a mortal stroke, it would be difficult to say. If it was worn over the armor, perhaps the helmeted effigy was supposed to protect the warrior, and the demoniacal one to affright his adversary. But then, this shirt similarly made and adorned, was woven by ladies when about to become mothers of knights or of common men. What use it could be in such case, I leave to the “_commères_” to settle. My own vocation of “gossip” will not help me to the solution.

But if chivalry had its shirts of need in Germany, to save from death, in England and France it had its “mercy-knives” to swiftly inflict it. Why they were so called I do not know, for after all they were only employed in order to kill knights in full armor, by plunging the knife through the bars of the visor into the eye. After the battle of Pavia, many of the French were killed with pickaxes by the peasantry, hacking and hewing through the joints of the armor.

How anxious were the sires of those times to train their children how best to destroy life! This was more especially the case among what were called the “half-christened Irish” of Connaught. In this province, the people left the right arms of their male infants unchristened. They excepted that part coming under the divine influences of baptism, in order that the children, when grown to the stature of fighting men, might deal more merciless and deadly blows. There was some such superstitious observance as this, I think, in ancient Germany. It can not be said, in reference to the suppressing of this observance, as was remarked by Stow after the city authorities had put down the martial amusement of the London apprentices--contending against one another of an evening with cudgels and bucklers, while a host of admiring maids as well as men stood by to applaud or censure--that the open pastime being suppressed, worse practice within doors probably followed.

Stout fellows were some of the knights of the romantic period, if we may believe half that is recorded of them. There is one, Branor le Brun, who is famous for having been a living Quintain. The game so called consists of riding at a heavy sack suspended on a balanced beam, and getting out of its way, if possible, before the revolving beam brought it round violently against the back of the assailant’s head. When Palamedes challenged old Branor, the aged knight rather scornfully put him aside as an unworthy yet valiant knight. Branor, however, offered to sit in his saddle motionless, while Palamedes rode at him, and got unhorsed by Branor’s mere inert resistance. I forget how many knights Branor le Brun knocked over their horses’ cruppers, after this quiet fashion.

It was not all courtesy in battle or in duel. Even Gyron, who was called the “courteous,” was a very “rough customer” indeed, when he had his hand on the throat of an antagonist. We hear of him jumping with all his force upon a fallen and helpless foe, tearing his helmet from its fastenings by main force, battering the knight’s face with it till he was senseless, and then beating on his head with the pommel of his sword, till the wretched fellow was dead. At this sort of pommelling there was never knight so expert as the great Bayard. The courtesy of the most savage in fight, was however undeniable when a lady was in the case. Thus we hear of a damsel coming to a fountain at which four knights were sitting, and one of them wishes to take her. The other three object, observing that the damsel is without a knight to protect her, and that she is, therefore, according to the law of chivalry, exempt from being attacked. And again, if a knight slew an adversary of equal degree, he did not retain his sword if the latter was a gift from some lady. The damsel, in such case, could claim it, and no knight worthy of the name would have thought of refusing to comply with her very natural request. Even ladies were not to be won, in certain cases, except by valor; as Arthur, that king of knights, would not win, nor retain, Britain, by any other means. The head of Bran the Blessed, it may be remembered, was hidden in the White Hill, near London, where, as long as it remained, Britain was invulnerable. Arthur, however removed it. He scorned to keep the island by any other means than his own sword and courage; and he was ready to fight any man in any quarrel.

Never did knight meet death more nobly than that Captain Douglas, whose heroism is recorded by Sir William Temple, and who “stood and burnt in one of our ships at Chatham, when his soldiers left him, because it never should be said a Douglas quitted his post without orders.” Except as an example of heroic endurance, this act, however, was in some degree a mistake, for the state did not profit by it. There was something more profitable in the act of Von Speyk, in our own time. When hostilities were raging between Holland and Belgium, in 1831, the young Dutch captain, just named, happened to be in the Scheldt, struggling in his gun-boat against a gale which, in spite of all his endeavors and seamanship, drove him ashore, under the guns of the Belgians. A crowd of Belgian volunteers leaped aboard, ordered him to haul down his colors and surrender. Von Speyk hurried below to the magazine, fell upon his knees in prayer, flung a lighted cigar into an open barrel of powder, and blew his ship to atoms, with nearly all who were on board. If he, by this sacrifice, prevented a Dutch vessel from falling into the enemy’s power, he also deprived Holland of many good seamen. The latter country, however, only thought of the unselfish act of heroism, in one who had been gratuitously educated in the orphan house at Amsterdam, and who acquitted his debt to his country, by laying down his life when such sacrifice was worth making. His king and countrymen proved that they could appreciate the noble act. The statue of Von Speyk was placed by the side of that of De Ruyter, and the government decreed that as long as a Dutch navy existed there should be _one_ vessel bearing the name of Von Speyk.

To return to the knights of earlier days, I will observe that indifferent as many of them were to meeting death, they, and indeed other men of note, were very far from being so as to the manner in which they should be disposed of _after_ death. In their stone or marble coffins, they lay in graves so shallow that the cover of the coffin formed part of the pavement of the church. Whittingham, the Puritan Dean of Durham, took up many of their coffins and converted them into horse or swine troughs. This is the dean who is said to have turned the finely-wrought holy-water vessels into salting-tubs for his own use.

Modern knights have had other cares about their graves than that alluded to above. Sir William Browne, for instance, one of George II.’s knights, and a medical man of some repute, who died in 1770, ordered by his will that when his coffin was lowered into the grave, there should be placed upon it, “in _its_ leathern case or coffin, my pocket Elzevir Horace, comes viæ vitæque dulcis et utilis, worn out with and by me.” There was nothing more unreasonable in this than in a warrior-knight being buried with all his weapons around him. And, with respect to warrior-knights and what was done with them after death, I know nothing more curious than what is told us by Stavely on the authority of Streder. I will give it in the author’s own words.

“Don John of Austria,” says Stavely, “governor of the Netherlands for Philip II. of Spain, dying at his camp at Buge” (Bouges, a mile from Namur), “was carried from thence to the great church at Havre, where his funeral was solemnized and a monument to posterity erected for him there by Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma. Afterward his body was taken to pieces, and the bones, packed in mails, were privately carried into Spain, where, being set together with small wires, the body was rejointed again, which being filled or stuffed with cotton, and richly habited, Don John was presented to the King, entire, leaning upon his commander’s staff, and looking as if he were alive and breathing. Afterward the corpse being carried to the Church of St. Laurence, at the Escurial, was there buried near his father, Charles V., with a fitting monument erected for him.”

Considering that there was, and is, a suspicion that Philip II. had poisoned his kinsman, the interview must have been a startling one. But Philip II. was not, perhaps, so afraid of dead men as the fourth Spanish king of that name. Philip IV., by no means an unknightly monarch, was born on a Good Friday, and as there is a Spanish superstition that they who are born on that day see ghosts whenever they pass the place where any one has been killed or buried, who died a violent death, this king fell into a habit of carrying his head so high, in order to avoid seeing those spirits, that his nose was continually _en l’air_, and he appeared to see nobody.

Romance, and perhaps faithful history, are full of details of the becoming deaths of ancient knights, upon the field. I question, however, if even Sir Philip Sidney’s was more dignified than that of a soldier of the 58th infantry, recorded in Nichols’s “Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century.” A straggling shot had struck him in the stomach. As he was too dreadfully wounded to be removed, he desired his comrades would pray by him, and the whole guard knelt round him in prayer till he died. Bishop Hurd remarked, when this was told him, that “it was true religion.” There was more of religion in such sympathy than there was of taste in the condolence of Alnwick, on the death of Hugh, Duke of Northumberland--a rather irascible officer, and Knight of the Garter. “O,” cried the Alnwick poet--

“O rueful sight! Behold, how lost to sense
The millions stand, suspended by suspense!”

But all fruitlessly were the millions so suspended, for as the minstrel remarked in his Threnodia--

“When Time shall yield to Death, Dukes must obey.”

“Dying in harness,” is a favorite phrase in chivalric annals to illustrate the bravery of a knight falling in battle, “clothed in complete steel.” So to die, however, was not always to die in a fray. Hume says of Seward, Earl of Northumberland, that there are two circumstances related of him, “which discover his high sense of honor and martial disposition. When intelligence was brought to him of his son Osborne’s death, he was inconsolable till he heard the wound was received on his breast, and that he had behaved with great gallantry in the action. When he found his own death approaching, he ordered his servants to dress him in a complete suit of armor, and sitting erect on the couch, with a spear in his hand, declared that in that position, the only one worthy of a warrior, he would patiently await the fatal moment.”

See how the chief of many a field
Prepares to give his latest breath;
And, like a well-trimmed warrior, yield
Becomingly t’impending death--
That one, stern conqueror of all,
Of chieftain in embattled tower,
Of lord within his ancient hall,
And maiden in her trellised bower.

To meet that surest of all foes,
From off his soft and pillowed bed,
With dignity old Seward rose,
And to a couch of state was led.
Fainting, yet firm of purpose there,
Stately as monarch on his throne,
Upright he sat, with kingly air,
To meet the coming foe, alone.

“Take from these limbs,” he weakly cried,
“This soft and womanish attire;
Let cloak and cap be laid aside--
Seward will die as died his sire:
Not clad in silken vest and shirt,
Like princes in a fairy tale;
With iron be these old limbs girt--
My vest of steel, my shirt of mail.