in his own proper person. There was not a braver knight in France,
during the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., than this Marquis de Laval,
Marshal of France. The English feared him almost as much as they did
the Pucelle. The household of this brave gentleman was, however, a hell
upon earth; and licentiousness, blasphemy, attempts at sorcery, and,
more than attempts at, very successful realizations of, murder were
the little foibles of this man of many wives. He excelled the most
extravagant monarchs in his boundless profusion, and in the barbaric
splendor of his court or house: the latter was thronged with ladies
of very light manners, players, mountebanks, pretended magicians, and
as many cooks as Julian found in the palace of his predecessor at
Constantinople. There were two hundred saddle-horses in his stable,
and he had a greater variety of dogs than could now be found at any
score of “fanciers” of that article. He employed the magicians for a
double purpose. They undertook to discover treasures for his use, and
pretty handmaids to tend on his illustrious person, or otherwise amuse
him by the display of their accomplishments. Common report said that
these young persons were slain after a while, their blood being of much
profit in making incantations, the object of which was the discovery of
gold. Much exaggeration magnified his misdeeds, which were atrocious
enough in their plain, unvarnished infamy. At length justice overtook
this monster. She did not lay hold of him for his crimes against
society, but for a peccadillo which offended the Duke of Brittany.
Giles de Laval, for this offence, was burnt at Nantes, after being
strangled--such mercy having been vouchsafed to him, because he was a
gallant knight and gentleman, and of course was not to be burnt alive
like any petty villain of peasant degree. He had a moment of weakness
at last, and just previous to the rope being tightened round his neck,
he publicly declared that he should never have come to that pass, nor
have committed so many excesses, had it not been for his wretched
education. Thus are men, shrewd enough to drive bargains, and able to
discern between virtue and vice, ever ready, when retribution falls on
them at the scaffold, to accuse their father, mother, schoolmaster, or
spiritual pastor. Few are like the knight of the road, who, previous to
the cart sliding from under him, at Tyburn, remarked that he had the
satisfaction, at least, of knowing that the position he had attained
in society was owing entirely to himself. “May I be hanged,” said he,
“if that isn’t the fact.” The finisher of the law did not stop to argue
the question with him, but, on cutting him down, remarked, with the
gravity of a cardinal before breakfast, that the gentleman had wronged
the devil and the ladies, in attributing his greatness so exclusively
to his own exertions.
I have said that perhaps Blue-Beard’s little foibles have been
exaggerated; but, on reflection, I am not sure that this pleasant
hypothesis can be sustained. De Laval, of whom more than I have told
may be found in Mezeray, was not worse than the Landvogt Hugenbach,
who makes so terrible a figure in Barante’s “Dukes of Burgundy.” The
Landvogt, we are told by the last-named historian, cared no more for
heaven than he did for anybody on earth. He was accustomed to say that
being perfectly sure of going to the devil, he would take especial care
to deny himself no gratification that he could possibly desire. There
was, accordingly, no sort of wild fancy to which he did not surrender
himself. He was a fiendish corruptor of virtue, employing money,
menaces, or brutal violence, to accomplish his ends. Neither cottage
nor convent, citizen’s hearth nor noble’s château, was secure from his
invasion and atrocity. He was terribly hated, terribly feared--but then
Sir Landvogt Hugenbach gave splendid dinners, and every family round
went to them, while they detested the giver.
He was remarkably facetious on these occasions, sometimes ferociously
so. For instance, Barante records of him, that at one of his pleasant
soirées he sent away the husbands into a room apart, and kept the wives
together in his grand saloon. These, he and his myrmidons despoiled
entirely of their dresses; after which, having flung a covering over
the head of each lady, who dared not, for her life, resist, the amiable
host called in the husbands one by one, and bade each select his own
wife. If the husband made a mistake, he was immediately seized and
flung headlong down the staircase. The Landvogt made no more scruple
about it than Lord Ernest Vane when he served the Windsor manager
after something of the same fashion. The husbands who guessed rightly
were conducted to the sideboard to receive congratulations, and drink
various flasks of wine thereupon. But the amount of wine forced upon
each unhappy wretch was so immense, that in a short time he was as near
death as the mangled husbands, who were lying in a senseless heap at
the foot of the staircase.
They who would like to learn further of this respectable individual,
are referred to the pages of Barante. They will find there that
this knight and servant of the Duke of Burgundy was more like an
incarnation of the devil than aught besides. His career was frightful
for its stupendous cruelty and crime; but it ended on the scaffold,
nevertheless. His behavior there was like that of a saint who felt
a little of the human infirmity of irritability at being treated as
a very wicked personage by the extremely blind justice of men. So
edifying was this chivalrous scoundrel, that the populace fairly took
him for the saint he figured to be; and long after his death, crowds
flocked to his tomb to pray for his mediation between them and God.
The rough jokes of the Landvogt remind me of a much greater man than
he--Gaston de Foix, in whose earlier times there was no lack of rough
jokes, too. The portrait of Gaston, with his page helping to buckle on
his armor, by Giorgione da Castel Franco, is doubtless known to most of
my readers--through the engraving, if not the original. It was formerly
the property of the Duke of Orleans; but came, many years ago, into the
possession, by purchase, of Lord Carlisle. The expression of the page
or young squire who is helping to adjust Gaston’s armor is admirably
rendered. That of the hero gives, perhaps, too old a look to a knight
who is known to have died young.
This Gaston was a nephew of Louis XII. His titles were Duke of Nemours
and Count d’Etampes. He was educated by his mother, the sister of King
Louis. She exulted in Gaston as one who was peculiarly her own work.
“Considering,” she says, “how honor became her son, she was pleased to
let him seek danger where he was likely to find fame.” His career was
splendid, but proportionally brief. He purchased imperishable renown,
and a glorious death, in Italy. He gained the victory of Ravenna, at
the cost of his life; after which event, fortune abandoned the standard
of Louis; and Maximilian Sforza recovered the Milanese territories of
his father, Ludovic. This was early in the sixteenth century.
But it is of another Gaston de Foix that I have to speak. I have given
precedence to one bearer of the name, because he was the worthier
man; but the earlier hero will afford us better illustrations of the
home-life of the noble knights who were sovereigns within their own
districts. Froissart makes honorable mention of him in his “Chronicle.”
He was Count de Foix, and kept court at Ortez, in the south of France.
There assembled belted knights and aspiring ’squires, majestic matrons
and dainty damsels. When the Count was not on a war-path, his house
was a scene of great gayety. The jingle of spurs, clash of swords,
tramp of iron heels, virelays sung by men-at-arms, love-songs hummed
by audacious pages, and romances entoned to the lyre by minstrels who
were masters in the art--these, with courtly feasts and stately dances,
made of the castle at Ortez anything but a dull residence. Hawking and
hunting seem to have been “my very good Erle’s” favorite diversion.
He was not so much master of his passions as he was of his retainers;
and few people thought the worse of him simply because he murdered his
cousin for refusing to betray his trust, and cut the throat of the only
legitimate son of the Earl.
We may form some idea of the practical jests of those days, from an
anecdote told by Froissart. Gaston de Foix had complained, one cold
day, of the scanty fire which his retainers kept up in the great
gallery. Whereupon one of the knights descended to the court-yard,
where stood several asses laden with wood. One of them he seized, wood
and ass together, and staggering up-stairs into the gallery, flung
the whole, the ass heels uppermost, on to the fire. “Whereof,” says
Froissart, “the Earl of Foix had great joy, and so had all they that
were there, and had marvel of his strength, how he alone came up all
the stairs with the ass and the wood on his neck.”
Gaston was but a lazy knight. It was high noon, Froissart tells us,
before he rose from his bed. He supped at midnight; and when he issued
from his chamber to proceed to the hall where supper was laid, twelve
torches were carried before him, and these were held at his table “by
twelve varlets” during the time that supper lasted. The Earl sat alone,
and none of the knights or squires who crowded round the other tables
dared to speak a word to him unless the great man previously addressed
him. The supper then must have been a dull affair.
The treasurer of the Collegiate Church of Chimay relates in a very
delicate manner how Gaston came to murder his little son. Gaston’s wife
was living apart from her husband, at the court of her brother, the
King of Navarre, and the “little son” in question was residing there
on a visit to his mother. As he was on the point of returning, the king
of Navarre gave him a powder, which he directed the boy to administer
to his father, telling him that it was a love-powder, and would bring
back his father’s affection for the mother. The innocent boy took the
powder, which was in fact poison; and a night or two after his return
to Ortez, an illegitimate son of Gaston found it in the boy’s clothes.
The base-born lad informed against his brother, and when Gaston had
given the powder to a dog, which immediately died, he could scarcely
be kept from poniarding his son upon the spot. The poor child was
flung into a dungeon, where, between terror and despair, he refused to
take any food. Upon being told of this, the earl entered the chamber
in which the boy was confined, “he had at the same time a little
knife in his hand, to pare withal his nails.... In great displeasure
he thrust his hand at his son’s throat, and the point of his knife a
little entered into his throat into a certain vein; and the earl said,
‘Ah, traitor, why dost thou not eat thy meat?’ and therewith the earl
departed without any more doing or saying.” Never was brutal murder
more daintily glozed over, but Froissart is so afraid that he may not
have sufficiently impressed you with a conviction of its being a little
accident, that he goes on to say “The child was abashed, and afraid of
the coming of his father, and was also feeble of fasting, and the point
of the knife a little entered into his throat, into a certain vein of
his throat; and so [he] fell down suddenly _and died_!”
The rascally sire was as jolly after the deed as before it; but he
too one day “fell down suddenly and died.” He had overheated himself
with hunting, and in that condition bathed in cold water as soon as he
reached home. The description of the whole of this domestic scene is
one of the most graphic in Froissart, but it is too long for quotation.
It must suffice that the vast possessions of the count fell into the
hands of that villanous illegitimate son, Sir Jenbayne de Foix. The
latter was one of the six knights who, with Charles VI., entered a
ball-room disguised as satyrs, and fast chained together. Some one, who
is supposed to have owed no good-will to the king, flung a torch into
the group. Their inflammable dresses immediately caught fire, and Sir
Jenbayne de Foix was one of those who was burned to death. The king
himself, as is well known, had a very narrow escape.
Perhaps one of the chief home pleasures enjoyed by knights when not
engaged in war, was the pleasure of the chase. Idle country gentlemen
now resemble their chivalrous ancestors in this respect, and for want
of or distaste for other vocations, spend three fourths of their
rural time in the fields. In the old days too, as ever, there were
clerical gentlemen very much addicted to hunting and moreover not
less so to trespassing. These were not reverend rectors on their
own thorough-breds, or curates on borrowed ponies, but dignified
prelates--even archbishops. One of the latter, Edmund, archbishop of
Canterbury, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, presumed to
hunt without permission, on the grounds of a young knight, the Earl
of Arundel, a minor. On the day the Earl came of age, he issued a
prohibition against the archiepiscopal trespasser, and the latter in
return snapped his fingers at the earl, and declared that his way
was as legally open to any chase as it was free into any church.
Accordingly, the right reverend gentleman issued forth as usual, with
hounds and horses, and a “numerous meet” of clerical friends and
other followers, glad to hunt in such company. Their sport, however,
was spoiled by the retainers of the young earl. These, in obedience
to their master’s orders, called off the dogs, unstopped the earths,
warned off the riders, and laughed at the ecclesiastical thunder of the
prelate, flung at them in open field. Edmund, finding it impossible
to overcome the opposition of the men, addressed himself to the
master, summarily devoting him _ad inferos_ for daring to interfere
with the prelatic pastimes. Nothing daunted, the young earl, who
would gladly have permitted the archbishop to hunt in his company,
whenever so disposed, but who would not allow the head of the church
in England to act in the woods of Arundel as if he were also lord of
the land, made appeal to the only competent court--that of the Pope.
The contending parties went over and pleaded their most respective
causes personally; the earl with calmness, as feeling that he had right
on his side; Edmund with easy arrogance, springing from a conviction
that the Pontiff would not give a layman a triumph over a priest. The
archbishop, however, was mistaken. He not only lost his cause, but he
was condemned in the expenses; and if any one thinks that this decree
checked him in trespassing, such an idea would show that the holder
of it knew little of the spirit which moved prelates fond of hunting.
The archbishop became the most confirmed poacher in the country; and
if he did not spoil the knight’s sport by riding in advance of the
hounds with a red herring, he had resort to means as efficacious for
marring the pleasures of others in the chase. He affected, too, to look
down upon the earl as one inferior to him in degree, and when they
encountered at court, the prelate exhibited no more courtesy toward the
gallant knight than was manifested by Lord Cowley in Paris toward the
English Exhibition Commissioners, when the mere men of intellect were
kept at what the peer thought a proper distance by the mere men of rank.
There is, however, no lack of instances of young knights themselves
being brought up in arrogance and wilfulness. This sort of education
lasted longer, perhaps, in France than elsewhere. As late as the last
century this instruction prevailed, particularly where the pupil was
intended for the army. Thus, the rearing of the little Vidame d’Amiens
affords us an illustration. He was awkward and obstinate, but he might
have been cured of both defects, had his mother been permitted to
have some voice in his education. She was the last to be consulted,
or rather, was never consulted at all. The more the little man was
arrogant, the more delighted were his relatives with such manifestation
of his spirit; and one day, when he dealt to his aunt, the Marquise de
Belliere Plessis, a box of the ear which sent the old lady staggering,
her only remark was, “My dear, you should never strike me with the left
hand.” The courteous Vidame mortally hated his tutor, and expressed
such a desire to kill him, that the pedagogue was asked to allow the
little savage to believe that he had accomplished the desired act of
homicide. Accordingly, a light musket was placed in the boy’s hands,
from which the ball had been drawn, unknown to him, and with this,
coming suddenly upon his instructor, who feigned the surprise he did
not feel, the Vidame discharged the piece full at the breast of his
monitor and friend. The servile sage pretended to be mortally wounded,
and acted death upon the polished floor. He was quietly got rid of, and
a pension of four hundred francs, just sixteen pounds a year, rewarded
his stupid servility. The little chevalier was as proud as Fighting
Fitzgerald of having, as he supposed, “killed his man.”
Let us return to earlier times for illustrations of the knight at
home, and also abroad. There is no lack of such illustration in the
adventures of Fulke Fitzwarren. Fulke was one of the outlawed barons
of the reign of King John. In his youth, he was brought up with the
four sons of King Henry; he was much beloved by them all, except John.
“It happened that John and Fulke were sitting all alone in a chamber
playing at chess; and John took the chess-board, and struck Fulke with
a great blow. Fulke felt himself hurt, raised his foot and struck John
in the middle of the stomach; and his head flew against the wall, and
he became all weak, and fainted. Fulke was in consternation; but he was
glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, and he rubbed
John’s ears, who recovered from his fainting fit, and went to the king
his father, and made a great complaint. ‘Hold your tongue, wretch,’
said the king, ‘you are always quarrelling. If Fulke did anything but
good to you, it must have been by your own desert;’ and he called his
master, and made him beat him finely and well for complaining. John was
much enraged against Fulke, so that he could never afterward love him
heartily.”
The above, as has been remarked, evinces how little respect there
was in those early times for royal authority and the doctrine of
non-resistance. But it may be observed, that even in these more polite
times, were the heir-apparent to strike a playfellow, his royal
highness would probably meet in return with as ready-handed, if not
quite so rough a correction as was inflicted upon John. The latter
could not forgive a bold companion of his boyhood, as James I. did, in
subsequent times, with regard to “Jamie Slates.” On the contrary, when
John became king, he plotted with as unscrupulous a person as himself,
to deprive Fulke of his estate. The conversation between the king and
his confederate, Moris de Powis, was overheard; and what came of it
is thus told in the history of Fulke Fitzwarren, as edited by Thomas
Wright Esq., for the Warton Club:--
“There was close by a knight who had heard all the conversation between
the king and Moris, and he went in haste to Sir Fulke, and told him
that the king was about to confirm by his charter, to Sir Moris, the
lands to which he had right. Fulke and his four brothers came before
the king, and prayed that they might have the common law and the lands
to which they had claim and right, as the inheritance of Fulke; and
they prayed that the king would receive from them a hundred pounds,
on condition that he should grant them the award of his court of gain
and loss. The king told them that what he had granted to Sir Moris, he
would hold to it whoever might be offended or who not. At length Sir
Moris spoke to Sir Fulke, and said, ‘Sir Knight, you are a great fool
to challenge my lands; if you say that you have a right to White-Town,
you lie; and if we were not in the king’s presence I would have proved
it on your body.’ Sir William, Fulke’s brother, without a word more,
sprang forward and struck Sir Moris with his fist in the middle of
his face, that it became all bloody; knights interfered that no more
hurt was done; then said Sir Fulke to the king: ‘Sir King, you are
my liege-lord, and to you was I bound by fealty, as long as I was in
your service, and as long as I held the lands of you; and you ought
to maintain me in right, and you fail me in right and common law; and
never was he good king who denied his frank tenants law in his court;
wherefore I return you your homages:’ and with this word, he departed
from the court and went to his hostel.”
Fulke was most unjustly exiled, but after a while he returned to
England, wandered about in various disguises, and at length, with a
ripe project, settled down as a collier or charcoal-burner in Windsor
Forest. I will once more draw from Mr. Wright’s edition of this
knightly biography for what ensued.
“At length came the king with three knights, all on foot to Fulke,
where he was arranging his fire. When Fulke saw the king, he knew him
well enough, and he cast the fork from his hand and saluted his lord
and went on his knees before him very humbly. The king and his three
knights had great laughter and game at the breeding and bearing of
the collier. They stood there very long. ‘Sir Vilain,’ said the king,
‘have you seen no stag or doe pass here?’ ‘Yes, my lord, awhile ago.’
‘What beast did you see?’ ‘Sir, my lord, a horned one; and it had long
horns.’ ‘Where is it?’ ‘Sir, my lord, I know very well how to lead you
to where I saw it.’ ‘Onward then, Sir Vilain, and we will follow you.’
‘Sir,’ said the collier, ‘shall I take my fork in my hand? for if it
were taken I should have thereby a great loss.’ ‘Yea, Vilain, if you
will.’ Fulke took the great fork of iron in his hand and led the king
to shoot; for he had a very handsome bow. ‘Sir, my lord,’ said Fulke,
‘will you please to wait, and I will go into the thicket and make the
beast come this way by here?’ ‘Yea,’ said the king. Fulke did hastily
spring into the thick of the forest; and commanded his company hastily
to seize upon King John, for ‘I have brought him there only with three
knights; and all his company is on the other side of the forest.’ Fulke
and his company leaped out of the thicket, and rushed upon the king
and seized him at once. ‘Sir King,’ said Fulke, ‘now I have you in my
power, such judgment I will execute on you as you would on me, if you
had taken me.’ The king trembled with fear for he had great dread of
Fulke.”
There is here, perhaps, something of the romantic history, but with
a substantiality of truth. In the end, Fulke, who we are told was
really one of the barons to whom we owe Magna Charta, and who was
anathematized by the pope, and driven into exile again and again, got
the better of all his enemies, pope and king included. There are two
traditions touching his death. One is, that he survived to the period
of the battle of Lewes, where he was one of a body of Henry the Third’s
friends who were drowned in the adjacent river. The other tells a very
different story, and is probably nearer the truth. We are inclined
to think with Mr. Wright, the editor of the biographical history in
question, that he who was drowned near Lewes, was the son of Fulke.
We add the following account, less because of its detail touching the
death of the old knight than as having reference to how knights lived,
moved, and had their being, in the period referred to:--
“Fulke and Lady Clarice his wife, one night, were sleeping together
in their chamber; and the lady was asleep, and Fulke was awake,
and thought of his youth; and repented much in his heart for his
trespasses. At length, he saw in the chamber so great a light, that it
was wonderful; and he thought what could it be? And he heard a voice,
as it were, of thunder in the air, and it said:--‘Vassal, God has
granted thy penance, which is better here than elsewhere.’ At that
word the lady awoke, and saw the great light, and covered her face for
fear. At length this light vanished. And after this light Fulke could
never see more, but he was blind all his days. Then Fulke was very
hospitable and liberal, and he caused the king’s road to be turned
through his hall at his manor of Alleston, in order no stranger might
pass without having meat or lodging, or other honor or goods of his.
This Fulke remained seven years blind, and suffered well his penance.
Lady Clarice died and was buried at the New Abbey; after whose death
Fulke lived but a year, and died at the White-town; and in great honor
was he interred at the New Abbey--on whose soul may God have mercy.
Near the altar is the body. God have mercy on us all, alive and dead.
Amen!”