At Cre'cy (S238) small cannon appear to have been used for the first
time in field warfare, though gunpowder was probably known to the
English friar, Roger Bacon (S208), a hundred years before. The object
of the cannon was to frighten and annoy the horses of the French
cavalry. They were laughed at as ingenious toys; but in the course of
the next two centuries those toys revolutionized warfare (S270) and
made the steel-clad knight little more than a tradition and a name.
In its day, however, knighthood (S153) did the world a good service.
Chivalry aimed to make the profession of arms a noble instead of a
brutal calling. It gave it somewhat of a religious character.
It taught the warrior the worth of honor, truthfulness, and courtesy,
as well as valor,--qualities which still survive in the best type of
the modern gentleman. We owe, therefore, no small debt to that
military brotherhood of the past, and may join the English poet in his
epitaph on the order:
"The Knights are dust,
Their good swords rust;
Their souls are with the saints, we trust."[1]
[1] Coleridge; see Scott's "Ivanhoe."