French was conducted by the former after the fashion above mentioned.
It was during the reign of Henry III., when Louis of France, by the
destruction of his army at “the fair of Lincoln,” was shut up in
London, and depended on the exertions of his wife, Blanche of Castile,
for his release. Blanche sent eighty large ships, besides many smaller
vessels, from Calais, under a piratical commander, the celebrated
Eustace Le Moine. Hubert de Burgh had only forty vessels wherewith to
proceed against this overwhelming force; and on board of these the
English knights proceeded, under protest and with a world of grumbling,
at being compelled to fight on the waters when they had no sea-legs,
and were accustomed to no battles but those on land. No heed was taken
of protest or grumbling; the forty vessels were loosened from their
moorings, and away went the reluctant but strong-boned land sailors,
all in shirts of mail in place of Guernsey jackets, to contend for
the first time with a French fleet. The English ships contrived to
get between Calais and the enemy’s vessels, and fell upon the latter
in their rear. The English bowmen handled their favorite weapons with
a deadly dexterity; and as soon as their vessels were made fast to
those of the French, out flew the quick-lime, flung by the English,
and carried by the wind into the faces of the French. While these
were stamping with pain, screwing their eyes up to look through the
lime-dust, or turning their backs to avoid it, the English boarders
made a rush, cut down men, hacked away the rigging, and so utterly
defeated the French, unaccustomed to this sort of fighting, that of the
great French fleet only fifteen vessels escaped. The number of Gallic
knights and inferior officers captured was very large. As for Eustace
le Moine, he had slunk below to avoid the lime-powder and battle-axes.
He was seized by Richard Fitzroy, King John’s illegitimate son. Fitzroy
refused to give the recreant quarter, but hewed off his head on the
taffrail, and sent it from town to town through England as a pleasant
exhibition.
Errant knights in quest of adventure, and anxious to secure renown,
less frequently visited England than other countries. They appear to
have had a mortal dislike of the sea. This dislike was common to the
bravest and greatest among them. I may cite, as an instance, the case
of the Duke of Orleans and his cavaliers, captured at Agincourt, and
brought over to England, from Calais to Dover, by the gallant and lucky
Henry. The latter walked the deck during a heavy ground swell, with as
much enjoyment as though he had been to the matter born. The French
prince and his knights, on the other hand, were as ignorant of the sea
and as uneasy upon it as a modern English Lord of the Admiralty. They
suffered horribly, and one and all declared that they would rather be
daily exposed to the peril of battle, than cross the straits of Dover
once a month.
Nevertheless, stray knights did occasionally brave the dangers of the
deep, and step ashore on the coast of Kent with a challenge to all
comers of equal degree. We have an instance of this sort of adventurer
in Jacques de Lelaing, whose story is told in this volume. We hear of
another in the nameless knight of Aragon, who in the reign of Henry
V. set all London and many a provincial baronial hall in commotion by
his published invitation to all knights of the same rank as himself,
to come and give him a taste of their quality in a bout at two-edged
sword, axe, and dagger.
The challenge was promptly accepted by stout Sir Robert Cary. Sir
Robert was a poor knight, with nothing to lose, for his sire had lost
all he possessed before Sir Robert’s time, by being faithful to poor
Richard II., a virtue, for the exercise of which he was punished
by forfeiture of his estates, decreed against him by Henry IV. The
disinherited knight, therefore, had a chance of winning land as well
as honor, should he subdue the arrogant Aragonese. The two met in the
then fashionable district of Smithfield, and the Devonshire swordsman,
after a bloody and long-enduring fight, so thoroughly vanquished the
Spaniard, that the king, who delighted in such encounters, and who was
especially glad when victory was won by the side he most favored, not
only restored to Sir Robert the forfeited paternal estates, but he also
authorized him to wear the arms of the much-bruised knight from beyond
sea.
At a later period knightly estates went in the service of another king.
Sir Henry Cary risked life and property in the cause of Charles I., and
while he preserved the first, he was deprived of nearly all the latter.
The head of the family, no longer a knight, if I remember rightly,
was residing at Torr Bay, when the Old Chevalier was about to attempt
to regain the three crowns which, according to no less than a French
archiepiscopal authority, James II. had been simple enough to lose for
one mass. At this period, the English king that would be, sent the Duke
of Ormond to the head of the Cary family, and not only conveyed to him
an assurance that his services to the Stuarts had not been forgotten;
but, by way of guarantee that future, and perhaps more than knightly
honors should be heaped upon him, in case of victory declaring for the
Stuart cause, the chevalier sent him the portraits of James II., and of
that monarch’s wife, Mary of Modena. Similar portraits are to be found
among the cherished treasures of many English families; and these are
supposed to have been originally distributed among various families,
as pledges from the giver, that for swords raised, money lost, or
blood shed in the cause of the Stuarts, knighthood and honors more
substantial should follow as soon as “the king” should “get his own
again.”
To revert to Charles I., it may be added that he was not half so
energetic in trying to keep his own as his grandson was in trying to
recover what had been lost. An incident connected with the battle of
Rowton Heath will serve to exemplify this. Never did king have better
champion than Charles had on that day, in the able knight Sir Marmaduke
Langdale. The knight in question had gained a marked advantage over his
adversary, the equally able Poyntz. To cheer the king, then beleaguered
in Chester Castle, with the news, Sir Marmaduke despatched Colonel
Shakerley. He could not have commissioned a better man. The colonel
contrived to get into Chester after crossing the Dee in a tub, which
he worked with one hand, while he towed his horse after him with the
other. He delivered his message, and offered to convey an answer
or instructions back to Sir Marmaduke, and by the same means, in a
quarter of an hour. The king hesitated; some sanction required for a
certain course of action proposed by Sir Marmaduke was not given, and
Poyntz recovered his lost ground, defeated the royal horse, and thus
effectually prevented Charles from obtaining access to Scotland and
Montrose.
I have given some illustrations of the means by which knighthood was
occasionally gained: an amusing illustration remains to be told.
Dangeau, in his memoirs, speaks of two French peeresses who lived
chiefly upon asses’ milk, but who, nevertheless, became afflicted
with some of the ills incident to humanity, and were ordered to take
physic. They were disgusted with the prescription, but got over the
difficulty charmingly by physicking the donkey. It was not an unusual
thing in France for very great people to treat their vices as they
did their ailments, by a vicarious treatment. Catherine de Medicis is
one out of many instances of this. She was desirous of succeeding in
some great attempt, and set down her failure to the account of her
sins. She instantly declared that she would atone for the latter,
provided her desires were accomplished, by finding a pilgrim who would
go from France to Jerusalem, on foot, and who at every three steps
he advanced should go back one. The wished-for success was achieved,
and after some difficulty a pilgrim was found, strong enough, and
sufficiently persevering to perform the pilgrimage. The royal pledge
was redeemed, and there only remained to reward the pilgrim, who was a
soldier from the neighborhood of Viterbo. Some say he was a merchant;
but merchant or soldier, Catherine knighted, ennobled, and enriched
him. His arms were a cross and a branch of palm tree. We are not told
if he had a motto. It, at all events, could not have been _nulla
vestigia retrorsum_. They who affirm that the pilgrim was a merchant,
declare that his descendants lost their nobility by falling again into
commercial ways--a course which was considered very derogatory, and
indeed, degrading, in those exclusive days.
I may mention here that Heraldry has, after all, very unfairly treated
many of the doers of great deeds. No person below the degree of a
knight could bear a cognizance of his own. Thus, many a squire may
have outdone his master in bravery; and indeed, many a simple soldier
may have done the same, but the memory of it could not go down to
posterity, because the valiant actor was not noble enough to be worthy
of distinction. In our English army, much the same rule still obtains.
Illustrious incompetence is rewarded with “orders,” but plain John
Smith, who has captured a gun with his own hands, receives a couple of
sovereigns, which only enable him to degrade himself by getting drunk
with his friends. Our heraldic writers approve of this dainty way of
conferring distinctions. An anonymous author of a work on Heraldry and
Chivalry, published at Worcester “sixty years since,” says--“We must
consider that had heraldry distributed its honors indiscriminately,
and with too lavish a hand, making no distinction between gentry and
plebeians, the glory of arms would have been lost, and their lustre
less refulgent.”
But it is clear that the rule which allowed none to bear cognizance
who was not of the rank of a knight, was sometimes infringed. Thus,
when Edward the Black Prince made the stout Sir James Audley, his own
especial knight, with an annuity of five hundred marks, for gallant
services at Poictiers, Audley divided the annuity among his four
squires, Delves, Dutton, Foulthurst, and Hawkeston, and also gave them
permission to wear his own achievements, in memory of the way in which
they had kept at his side on the bloody day of Poictiers.
The fashion of different families wearing the same devices had,
however, its inconveniences. Thus, it happened that at this very battle
of Poictiers, or a little before it, Sir John Chandos reconnoitring
the French army, fell in with the Seigneur de Clerment, who was
reconnoitring the English army. Each saw that the device on the upper
vestment of his adversary was the same as his own, blue worked with
rays of gold round the border. They each fell to sharp, and not very
courteous words. The French lord at length remarked that Sir John’s
claim to wear the device was just like “the boastings of you English.
You can not invent anything new,” added the angry French knight, “but
when you stumble on a pretty novelty, you forthwith appropriate it.”
After more angry words they separated, vowing that in next day’s fight,
they would make good all their assertions.
As the general rule was, that squires could not bear a cognizance, so
also was it a rule that knights should only fight with their equals.
For knights are bound to feel no blows
From paltry and unequal foes;
Who, when they slash and cut to pieces,
Do all with civilest addresses.
It is in allusion to this rule that Don Quixote says to Sancho Panza:
“Friend Sancho, for the future, whenever thou perceivest us to be any
way abused by such inferior fellows, thou art not to expect that I
should offer to draw my sword against them; for I will not do it in the
least; no, do thou then draw and chastise them as thou thinkest fit;
but if any knight come to take their part, then will I be sure to step
in between thee and danger.”
Knights, as I have said, have had honor conferred on them for very
strange reasons, in many countries, but in none for slighter reasons,
perhaps, than in France. We may probably except Belgium; for there
is a living knight there, who obtained his order of chivalry for his
pleasant little exhibition of gallantry in furnishing new-laid eggs
every morning at the late queen’s table, when every hen but his, in the
suburban village of Laecken had ceased to lay!
Dumas, in his “Salvandire,” satirically illustrates how knights were
occasionally made in the days of Louis XIV. The hero of that dashing
romance finds himself a captive in the prison of Fort l’Evêque; and
as the king will not grant him permission to leave, he resolves to
leave without permission. He makes the attempt by night, descends from
the window in the dark, is caught by the thigh on a spike, and is
ultimately carried to a cell and a bed within his prison-walls. The
following day the governor waits upon him, and questions him upon the
motives for his dangerous enterprise. The good governor’s curiosity is
founded solely on his anxiety to elicit from the prisoner, that the
desire of the latter to escape was not caused by his dissatisfaction
with any of the prison arrangements, whether of discipline or diet.
The captive signs a certificate to that effect, adding, that his sole
motive for endeavoring to set himself free, was because he had never
done anything to deserve that he should be put under restraint. A few
days after, the governor announces to the recluse that the certificate
of the latter has had an excellent effect. Roger supposes that it has
gained him his liberty; but the governor complacently remarks that
it has done better than that, and that the king, in acknowledgment
of the strict character of the governor’s surveillance, has created
him chevalier of the order of St. Louis. If all the prisoners had
succeeded in escaping, as nearly as Roger, the governor would probably
have been made Knight of the Holy Ghost! The king of France had many
such faithful servants; but history affords many examples of a truer
fidelity than this; particularly the old romances and legendary
history--examples of faithfulness even after death; but, though there
may be many more romantic in those chronicles, I doubt if there is any
one so touching as the proof of fidelity which a knighted civilian,
Sir Thomas Meautis, gave of his affection for Lord Bacon, to whom that
ancient servant of the great lawyer, erected a monument at his own
cost. Hamond Lestrange relates a curious incident, to show that these
two were not divided even after death. “Sir Thomas,” says Lestrange,
“was not nearer to him living than dead; for this Sir Thomas ending
his life about a score of years after, it was his lot to be inhumed
so near his lord’s sepulchre, that in the forming of his grave, part
of the viscount’s body was exposed to view; which being espied by a
doctor of physic, he demanded the head to be given to him; and did most
shamefully disport himself with that skull which was somewhile the
continent of so vast treasures of knowledge.”
Other knights have been celebrated for other qualities. Thus, Sir
Julius Cæsar never heard Bishop Hackett preach without sending him
a piece of money. Indeed, the good knight never heard any preacher
deliver a sermon without sending him money, a pair of gloves, or some
other little gift. He was unwilling, he said, to hear the Word of God,
gratis.
Other knights have cared less to benefit preachers, than to set up
for makers or explainers of doctrines themselves. Thus the Chevalier
Ramsay held that Adam and Eve begot the entire human race in Paradise,
the members of which fell with their procreators; and in this way
the chevalier found in an intelligible form “the great, ancient, and
luminous doctrine of our co-existence with our first parents.” The
Chevalier deemed that in teaching such doctrine he was rearing plants
for a new Paradise; but he was not half so usefully engaged as some
brother knights who were practically engaged as planters. We may
cite Sir John St. Aubyn, who introduced plane-trees into Cornwall in
1723; and Sir Anthony Ashley, the Dorchester knight, who enjoys the
reputation of having introduced cabbages into England about the middle
of the sixteenth century.
In contrast with these useful knights, the person of the once famous
Chevalier de Lorenzi seems to rise before me, and of him I will now add
a few words, by way of conclusion to my miscellaneous volume.
It is perhaps the tritest of platitudes to say that men are
distinguished by various qualities; but it is among the strangest if
not most novel of paradoxes, that the same man should be remarkable for
endowments of the most opposite quality. The eccentric knight whose
name and title I have given above, is, however, an illustration of
the fact; namely, that a man may be at once stupid and witty. It was
chiefly for his stupidity that Lorenzi was famous, a stupidity which
excited laughter. I must, nevertheless, say in behalf of the brother
of the once celebrated minister of France at the Court of Florence, in
the days of Louis XV., that his stupidity so often looks like wit, as
to induce the belief that it was a humor too refined for his hearers to
appreciate.
Acute as Grimm was, he seems to have undervalued the chevalier in
this respect. That literary minister-plenipotentiary of the Duke of
Saxe Gotha could only see in the chevalier the most extraordinary of
originals. He acknowledges, at the same time, Lorenzi’s high feeling of
honor, and his frank and gentle spirit. The chevalier was crammed with
scientific knowledge, but so confusedly that, according to Grimm, he
could never explain himself in an intelligible way, or without exciting
shouts of laughter on the part of his hearers. Madame de Geoffrin,
when comparing the chevalier with the ungraceful M. de Burigny, said
that the latter was awkward in body, but that Lorenzi was awkward in
mind. As the latter never spoke without, at least, an air of profound
reflection, and had therewith a piquant Florentine accent, his mistakes
were more relished. I do not think much of his misapprehension when
introduced, at Lyons, to M. de la Michaudière, in whose company he
dined, at the residence of the commandant of the city. The gentleman
was addressed by an old acquaintance as Le Michaudière, and Lorenzi,
mistaking this for L’Ami Chaudière, persisted in calling the dignified
official by the appellation of Monsieur _Chaudière_, which, to the
proud _intendant_ of Lyons, must have been as bad as if the chevalier
had certified that the _intendant’s_ father was a brazier.
He was far more happy, whether by chance or design, I can not say, at
a subsequent supper at M. de la Michaudière’s house. At the table sat
M. le Normant, husband of Madame de Pompadour, then at the height of
her brilliant infamy. Lorenzi hearing from a neighbor, in reply to an
inquiry, that the gentleman was the consort of the lady in question,
forthwith addressed him as Monsieur de Pompadour, which was as severe
an infliction as husband so situated could well have endured.
This honorable chevalier was clearly not a religious man--but among
knights and other distinguished personages in France, and elsewhere,
at the period of which I am treating, the two terms were perfectly
distinct, and had no necessary connection. Accordingly, a lady who
had called on Lorenzi one Sunday morning, before eleven o’clock,
proposed, at the end of their conversation, to go with him to mass.
“Do they still celebrate mass?” asked the chevalier, with an air of
astonishment. As he had not attended mass for fifteen years, Grimm
gravely asserts that the Florentine imagined that it was no longer
celebrated. “The more,” adds the epistolary baron, “that as he never
went out before two o’clock, he no longer recollected that he had seen
a church-door open.”
The chevalier, who was Knight of the Order of St. Stephen of Tuscany,
and who had withdrawn from the French Army, with the rank of colonel,
after the conquest of Minorca, had a great devotion toward the abstract
sciences. He studied geometry and astronomy, and had the habit, says
Grimm, to measure the events of life, and reduce them to geometrical
value. As he was thoughtful, he more frequently, when addressed, made
reply to abstruse questionings of his own brain than to persons who
spoke to him. Grimm, after saying that the Knight of St. Stephen was
only struck by the true or false side of a question, and never by its
pleasant or amusing aspect, illustrates his saying by an anecdote,
in which many persons will fail to find any remarkable point. Grimm
encountered him at Madame Geoffrin’s, after his return from a tour in
Italy. “I saw him embroiling his senses with the genealogies of two
ladies in whose society he passes his life, and who bear the same name,
although they are of distinct families. Madame Geoffrin endeavored to
draw him from these genealogical snares, observing to him:--‘Really,
chevalier, you are in your dotage. It is worse than ever.’ ‘Madame,’
answered the chevalier, ‘life is so short!’” Grimm thought he should
have done rank injustice to posterity if he had not recorded this reply
for the benefit of future students of laconic wit. And again:--Grimm
shows us the chevalier walking with Monsieur de St. Lambert toward
Versailles. On the way, the latter asked him his age. “I am sixty,”
said the knight. “I did not think you so old,” rejoined his friend.
“Well,” replied the chevalier, “when I say sixty, I am not indeed quite
so old, just yet; but--” “But how old are you then, in reality?” asked
his companion. “Fifty-five, exactly; but why may I not be allowed to
accustom myself to change my age every year, as I do my shirt?”
One day, he was praising the figure of a lady, but instead of saying
that she had the form of a nymph, he said that her shape was like
that of Mademoiselle Allard. “Oh!” cried Grimm, “you are not lucky,
chevalier, in your comparison. Mademoiselle Allard may be deservedly
eulogized for many qualities, but nobody ever thought of praising her
shape.” “Likely enough,” said Lorenzi, “for I do not know, nor, indeed,
have I ever seen her; but as everybody talks about Mademoiselle Allard,
I thought I might talk about her too.”
If there was satire in this it was not of so neat a quality as that
exhibited by him at Madame Greffon’s, where he was spending an evening
with Grimm and D’Alembert. The last two were seated, and conversing.
Lorenzi stood behind them, with his back to the chimney-piece, and
scarcely able to hold up his head, so overcome was he by a desire to
sleep. “Chevalier,” said Grimm, “you must find our conversation a
horrid bore, since you fall asleep when you are on your legs.” “Oh,
no!” exclaimed the chevalier, “you see I go to sleep when I like.” The
naïveté with which he insinuated that he liked to go to sleep rather
than listen to the small talk of a wit and a philosopher, was expressed
with a delicious delicacy.
Of his _non-sequential_ remarks Grimm supplies several. He was once
speaking disparagingly of M. de St. Lambert’s knowledge of chess. “You
forget,” said the latter, “that I gained fifteen louis to your thirty
sous, during our campaign in Minorca.” “Oh, ay,” answered the knight,
“but that was toward the end of the siege!”
It was at this siege that he used to go to the trenches with his
astronomical instruments, to make observations. He one day returned
to his quarters without his instruments, having left them all in the
trenches. “They will certainly be stolen,” said a friend. “That can’t
be,” said Lorenzi, “for I left my watch with them.”
And yet this “distraught” knight was the cause, remote cause, of the
death of Admiral Byng. He discovered, by mere chance, in his quarters
at Minorca, a book of signals as used by the English fleet. He hastened
with it to the Prince de Beaubeau, who, in his turn, hastened to place
it before the Marshal de Richelieu. The commanders could scarcely
believe in their good fortune, but when the naval combat commenced it
was seen that the English observed this system of signals exactly. With
this knowledge it was easy to anticipate all their manœuvres, and they
were obliged to withdraw with disgrace, which Byng was made to expiate
by his death. The chevalier never thought of asking for a reward, and
his government entirely forgot to give him one.
When about to accompany M. de Mirepoix, who was appointed embassador to
London, he packed up his own things and that so perfectly that it was
not till he had sent them off that he discovered he had left himself
nothing to travel in but the shirt and robe-de-chambre which he wore
while employed in thus disposing of the rest of his wardrobe.