The 17th of December, 1566, was the christening day of Mary Stuart's
infant son. Amongst the festivities arranged in celebration of the
event, there was a "great banquet", to which the representatives of
foreign sovereigns had been invited, and at which a foremost place had
been assigned to Hatton and the Englishmen who had accompanied him to
Scotland. To enliven the entertainment, George Buchanan had written a
masque, in which the actors were satyrs who, whilst reciting his
complimentary verses, were to bring various symbolical gifts to the
royal infant. The performance of this interlude had been entrusted to a
Frenchman named Bastien. As the meat was being brought through the great
hall, on a "trim engine", that seemed to move of itself, he made his
appearance with a band of men disguised to represent the mythological
monsters, and wearing long tails, in keeping with their assumed
character. But he and his associates "were not content only to red
roun". Whether merely acting on a mischievous impulse or deliberately
carrying out a preconcerted joke, the mummers, as they passed near the
English guests, put their hands to their tails and began wagging them.
Hatton and his party "daftly apprehending that which they should not
seem to have understood", and placing the worst construction on the
silly and unseemly trick, chose to believe that it had been planned in
derision of them and out of spiteful jealousy "that the Queen made more
of them than of the Frenchmen". To mark their sense of the insult
offered them, "they all set down upon the bare floor behind the back of
the board, that they should not see themselves scorned, as they
thought". In relating the incident to Sir James Melville, who records it
in his _Memoirs_, Hatton added that, if it had not taken place in the
Royal palace and in presence of the Queen herself, he would "have put a
dagger to the heart of the French knave Bastien".[291]
Coarse and unmannerly as was the satyrs' by-play, it would hardly seem
to have deserved to be taken so seriously and so ill by the English
guests, if it were not remembered that it expressed in dumb show what
had for centuries been looked upon by Englishmen as a deadly insult--a
reference to the popular belief that they were distinguished from the
natives of other countries by the physical monstrosity of bearing tails.
That this was accepted as an actual and disgraceful fact there is
abundant evidence to prove. In a medieval Latin poem[292] devoted to an
enumeration of the distinctive characteristics of the various nations of
Europe, the unflattering lines that fall to the share of the English,
jeer at them for this deformity, whilst not omitting to denounce the
treachery so commonly and so spitefully attributed to them by their
enemies:
A brute beast is the Englishman,
For he doth bear a tail;
Beware, and treat him as a foe,
E'en when he bids thee "Hail!"[293]
The anonymous satirist, however, was not original. He had not the merit,
such as it might be, of having invented the slander which he flung as an
insult at the people against whom he obviously entertained a bitter
animosity. If, as there is reason to believe, he was a Frenchman, he
merely repeated a gibe which had long been one of the commonplaces of
vulgar vituperation amongst his compatriots. In the description which
the thirteenth-century chronicler, Jacques de Vitry, gives of the
depraved state of Paris in his day, and more particularly of the rude
behaviour and coarse jests of the students who flocked to its famous
university, he states that diversity of nationality aroused amongst them
dissensions, hatred and violent animosities, to which they gave vent by
indulging in all kinds of invectives against each other. As an example
of their scurrility, he mentions that they called the English drunkards
and "tailards".[294] To suppose, from the very absurdity of the
imputation, that it was merely cast as a taunt, and that no actual
belief lay behind it, would be to ignore all that medieval credulity was
capable of. Moreover, the attitude taken up by the English themselves,
implied shame at an alleged deformity fully as much as anger at a wanton
insult. On this point evidence is supplied by the Dominican monk Etienne
de Bourbon, a moralist who flourished about the middle of the thirteenth
century. In a treatise which is devoted to the exposition of subjects
suitable for the pulpit, and which abounds in quaint stories as well as
in caustic commentaries on contemporary manners, he does not omit to
deal with the inordinate love of dress displayed by women, and to
denounce the prevailing fashion of wearing extravagantly long trains to
their gowns. He rebukes them for impiously presuming to better God's
work, for doing away with the honourable distinction conferred upon them
as human beings, and for deliberately assuming that which brings them
down to the same level as brute beasts. As a climax, he inveighs against
their shamelessness in making themselves what the English blush to be
called--"tailards".[295]
The events that were chiefly instrumental in bringing the English into
either contact or conflict with Continental nations, during the Middle
Ages, were the Crusades and the Hundred Years' War. The chronicles that
deal with these are not wanting in instances from which it may be
gathered how readily the obnoxious gibe came to the lips of those that
wished to show their contempt for the islanders. Richard of Devizes, who
wrote one of the earliest and most authentic narratives of the reign of
Richard I, with whom he was contemporary, describes how, in 1190, the
inhabitants of Messina manifested their hatred for the strangers whom
the King had brought to their shores, and how they tried to wreak
vengeance on him and his "tailards"; for, explains the chronicler, the
Greeks and the Sicilians gave the name of "tailards" to all who followed
the English monarch.[296]
Another very early reference to the use of the term "tailard" as an
opprobrious synonym for "Englishmen" is that which occurs in a metrical
romance dealing with the same period and also recording, but with
poetical freedom, the life and exploits of Richard Coeur de Lion. The
exact date of the poem is unknown; but the fact of its being mentioned
in the _Chronicles_ of Richard of Gloucester and in those of Robert de
Brunne, supplies evidence of its having been written earlier than the
year 1300. It is confessedly a translation from the French; and that may
account for the appearance in it of an insulting epithet which an
English writer might have hesitated to use, even as an invective in the
mouth of an enemy. The Second Book of this romance is devoted to a
journey to the Holy Land, which the English King is supposed to have
undertaken prior to the actual crusade, but which is, however, made to
include the well-known incident of his capture. The poet tells how, when
returning from Palestine, with "Sir Foulke Doyly of renown, and Sir
Thomas of Multoun", Richard was betrayed, captured, and brought as a
prisoner before the King of Allemayne; and how, when he represented
himself and his companions as pilgrims,
"The Kyng callid Rychard be name,
And clepyd him 'taylard', and sayde him schame."[297]
In the Sixth Book of the same poem, it is related how the English King,
on his way to Acre, put in at Cyprus and sent messengers to the Emperor,
and how that monarch "began to rage", threw a knife at one of them, and
followed this up by peremptorily ordering them out of his presence, with
the words:--
"Out, 'taylards', of my paleys!
Now go and say your 'tayled' King
That I owe him no thing."[298]
When the Emperor's steward ventured to represent to his master that
such treatment of honourable knights who came to him in the character of
ambassadors was not justifiable, the furious but apocryphal potentate
"Carved off his nose by the grusle,
And said: Traytour, thief, steward,
Go, playne to English 'taylarde'."[299]
There is a further account of Richard's journey to the Holy Land in a
poem by a writer of whom we know that his name was Ambrose, and that he
witnessed various historical events between 1188 and 1196. It would also
appear from his narrative that he actually accompanied the Crusaders on
the expedition which he records. He, too, refers to the hostile attitude
assumed by the inhabitants of Messina towards the English King's
followers, and states that they jeered at the foreigners and called them
"foul dogs", an epithet which, in the light of the parallel texts, may
be looked upon as an allusion to the tails which the English were
commonly believed to bear.[300]
At the beginning of the thirteenth century, there is an instance of the
use of the offensive gibe which shows to what purpose it was beginning
to be turned by the literate class of the day. During the minority of
Henry III, Louis VIII, continuing the aggressive policy inaugurated by
his father, Philip Augustus, against the incapable administration of
King John, made a vigorous effort to wrest Poitou from the English.
Amongst the most noteworthy achievements of this campaign, was the
capture of La Rochelle, in 1224. In celebration of this event, a
poetaster of the day wrote some doggerel verses, which the _Chronicle of
Lanercost_[301] has preserved:--
'Tis our own native King, 'tis a stranger no more,
Who reigns in Rochelle, by the fortune of war;
And the fear of the English no longer prevails,
For he's made them all harmless by breaking their tails.[302]
On the other side, however, it was not forgotten that, a few years
earlier, in 1217, the same Louis, after being deserted by the
discontented barons who had called him over, had suffered a crushing
defeat at Lincoln. This supplied fair material for a retort in the same
style:--
We have dragged our French foes,
Strung like larks in long rows,
And made fast to our tails with a rope;
That it really was so,
Why, there's Lincoln to show,
And that won't be questioned, I hope.[303]
The circumstances in which we next hear the contemptuous appellation of
"tailards" applied to the English are particularly dramatic. It is in
the course of the seventh crusade, that which was undertaken, in 1248,
by Louis IX with an English contingent, and of which Matthew of Paris is
one of the chroniclers. This time, however, it is not from the enemy
that the insult comes. It is from an impetuous and overbearing ally,
from the French King's brother, Count Robert of Artois. The Count was
jealous of William Longsword; and on one occasion, when the leader of
the English was returning from a successful but unauthorized raid, he
was arbitrarily deprived by his arrogant rival of the booty which he was
bringing back to the camp. Having in vain appealed to Louis, who appears
to have been quite powerless against his brother's presumption, the
English chief retired to Acre, with his two hundred knights; and the
news of their departure drew from Artois the scornful exclamation that
the army of the noble French was well purged of those "tailards".[304]
Longsword was ultimately prevailed upon by the king to return; but it
was not long before he had again to bear the brunt of Artois'
overweening pride and insolence. A difference of opinion had arisen
between the rash and headstrong Count and the more cautious Master of
the Templars, as to the advisability of following up a successful attack
that had just been made on the infidels. Longsword was present and
attempted to intervene as a peacemaker between the disputants; but he
only succeeded in drawing on himself the anger of the hot-headed
Frenchman, who put a climax to his violent invectives by insultingly
referring to the pusillanimity of the timid "tailards", and expressing a
wish that the army might, once for all, be purged of tails and
"tailards".[305] Even the dignified self-possession of Longsword was not
proof against such jeers. "Count Robert," he replied, "I shall certainly
proceed, undismayed by any peril of impending death. We shall, I fancy,
be to-day where you will not dare to touch my horse's tail."[306] In the
engagement thus recklessly forced on--it was the battle of
Mansourah--both Artois and Longsword perished. But whilst the French
prince lost his life when trying to swim his horse across a river, after
ignominiously turning tail,[307] the English knight fell fighting
valiantly with his face to the overwhelming foe.
The chronicles which record the events that marked the closing years of
the thirteenth century supply a grim illustration of the ignominious
treatment which their reputation as "tailards" sometimes brought upon
the English. The war which broke out about this time between Edward I
and Philip IV of France had for its cause, or, perhaps more correctly,
for its pretext, one of the brawls which frequently arose when the
sailors of the two countries met in the ports on either side of the
Channel. Whether rightly or wrongly, the Frenchmen represented the
English as the aggressors. They brought the matter under the notice of
their own king, and represented it as an insult to him and to the whole
nation that they should have been so wantonly ill-used by the
"tailards". In the reprisals which followed, Philip's brother, Charles,
took a conspicuous part. Having a previous and personal grievance
against the English, he vented his spite even on unoffending pilgrims
and students. He hanged several of the poor wretches who fell into his
hands; and, adding insult to injury, strung up dogs side by side with
them, to intimate, says the _Chronicle of Lanercost_, the resemblance
which he thought to exist between the two, or, as another record even
more plainly puts it, to show that he made no difference between a dog
and an Englishman. Amongst the State Papers relative to the history of
Edward I, there is a document which very strikingly confirms the truth
of this barbarous incident. It consists of a long roll containing an
account of the various outrages committed by the French on English
mariners and on inhabitants of the Cinque Ports. One of the charges
brought against the Norman seamen is illustrated in the margin by a
contemporaneous sketch representing a row of Englishmen hanging up, with
a dog between each two.[308]
It is suggestive of the annoyance which the English felt at their
opprobrious nickname that, when we find their writers noticing it, it is
almost invariably under provocation and in a tone of indignant protest.
One noteworthy exception to this is to be met with in a curious,
half-literary, half-historical production, attributed to John of
Bridlington. It is a political retrospect of the reign of Edward III,
and consists of a supposed ancient text, in Latin verse, with a recent
commentary on it. The poem itself purports to be a prophecy, whilst the
notes indicate in what manner the predictions were fulfilled. As the
leading event for the year 1356, the date of the battle of Poitiers, it
is foretold that,
"The four cockrels shall learn what defeat is, that day
When the French meet the English in battle array,
And the big-buttocked bullies are shamefully routed
By the men whom as 'tailards' their ribaldry flouted".[309]
The imaginary scholiast explains the meaning of this to be, that the
brood of the Gallic cock, or, in other words, the French, will be
vanquished by the English, whom they jeeringly call "tailards"; that the
appellation which is here applied to them and which has been somewhat
euphemistically translated by "big-buttocked", is intended as a set-off
against the ignominious term by which they commonly designate the
English; and that the four cockrels especially referred to, are the king
and his three sons. "And, indeed, these four," it is added, "were
actually vanquished in that battle, the King himself being captured with
one of his sons, whilst the other two fled from the field."[310]
After Poitiers, the invasion of France by Henry V is chronologically the
next important event in the long medieval struggle between England and
France. The initial success of the English, whilst embittering the
animosity of their enemies, inspired a restraining respect; and there is
an expression of those mingled feelings of aversion and of fear in the
lines which a poetaster of the day addressed to the invaders, partly as
a reproach, partly as an appeal:
"Perfidious race that perjured England breeds,
Whose evil nature shows in all your deeds,
Why must you still, with baneful purpose, seek
Your spite on righteous Frenchmen thus to wreak?
Christ's servants they, and constant to the faith
Which twice from you has suffered wanton scathe;
Your words are fair, but yet in all you do,
The crooked paths of falsehood you pursue;
Cut off that poisonous tail you long have worn,
A byword to the nations, and their scorn!
For thee, their king, be not my warning vain,
And, in thy mem'ry let this truth remain:
That God who willed thou shouldst a 'tailard' be
Has not denied his hallowing grace to thee."[311]
But the fortune of war began to turn against the English on the death of
Henry V in 1422; and the exultation caused by that event is voiced by
Olivier Basselin, in one of his popular poems:--
"The King who sat upon the English throne
The crown of France claimed also for his own;
He strove to drive as outcasts from their land
The men that dared to stem the invading tide;
But, when death dashed the sceptre from his hand,
The alien host was scattered far and wide,
And France is now from English 'tailards' freed;
May curses light on all the recreant breed!"[312]
A few years later, possibly about 1430, a popular ballade, in which an
unknown writer celebrated the exploits of Jeanne d'Arc, opened with a
repetition of the old insult:--
"Back, English 'tailards', back!"[313]
And Enguerrand de Monstrelet, the Burgundian chronicler of the events
that marked the latter half of the Hundred Years' War, records another
historical occasion on which the French gave utterance to their triumph
in the traditional gibe at the alleged monstrosity of their old enemies.
In his account of the evacuation of Paris, in 1436, he relates that, as
the English retired from the city which they had held for sixteen years,
the inhabitants hooted them with great cries of "Tails!"[314]
Coming down to the sixteenth century, we find that, in the early years
of it, when hostilities broke out between Louis XII and Henry VIII, the
old insult fell readily from the pen of the French versifiers who found
subjects for their rhymes in the military incidents of the time. Thus,
in the _Dépucellage de la ville de Tournay_, the town, referring to its
ill-advised refusal of help when the English laid siege to it, is made
to say:--
"To guard my ramparts from the foe's attack
A ready offer from the King was brought;
But, I refused, and sent the answer back:
'With men for watch and ward, no means I lack
To bring the "tailards'" enterprise to nought'".[315]
But pride went before a fall. Tournay was occupied by the English in
1513.
In Anatole de Montaiglon's collection of fifteenth and sixteenth century
verse, there is a poem which bears the title of _Courroux de la Mort
contre les Anglois_, and which is in substance a bitter invective
against the English generally. It is undated; but an allusion to the
porcupine, the well-known emblem of Louis XII, points to its having also
been written at this same period. In an apostrophe, the poet promises
his countrymen an easy victory over the English:--
"In war your arms will speedily prevail
Against your foe, the King 'that wears a tail'".[316]
The fight of Guinegate, commonly known as the battle of the Spurs, can
hardly have been looked upon by him as a fulfilment of his prophecy. It
may rather, if that were still possible, have increased the animosity
which inspired the two scurrilous lines in which he strung together as
many opprobrious epithets as the measure of his verse would admit, and
which duly included the traditional slander, linked, in this instance,
with the equally popular nickname of "godon", supposed to have
originated in the frequent and profane use which the English made of
God's name:--
"Ye noisome, greedy, fetid braggarts, go!
Ye 'tailard' godons, rid me of your sight!"[317]
So far, the use of the abusive term "tailard", in French _coué_ and in
Latin _caudatus_, has been traced in immediate connection with events
that brought the English into direct conflict with their enemies. There
are not wanting instances, however, to show that no special provocation
was required, and that from century to century it currently served the
purpose of those whom national antipathy prompted to revile the English,
or to hold them up to ridicule. To begin with Eustache Deschamps, the
most prolific and versatile versifier of the late fourteenth and the
early fifteenth centuries, we find him giving Englishmen and their tails
a conspicuous place in his satirical verses. In a poem of which only a
fragment remains, he describes how
"They swagger grandly down the street,
An awsome sight to all they meet";
but how, in order not to mar the effect of the imposing appearance which
they assume,
"Between their legs they hide with care
The tail which rumour says they wear".[318]
The Englishmen's tails also supply the subject of a rondeau in which
Deschamps mockingly compares the strength of the French with that of the
English, ironically proclaiming the superiority of the latter as proved
by the greater mass of flesh they have to carry, and the additional
appendage they are obliged to drag about with them:--
The English are more stout, 'tis clear,
Than any Frenchman you can meet.
Slight burdens only Frenchmen bear;
The English are more stout, 'tis clear.
Two butts they carry everywhere,
And eke a tail, so trig and neat,
The English are more stout, 'tis clear,
Than any Frenchman you can meet.[319]
In addition to this, Deschamps has a satirical ballade, in which he
again drags in the English by the tail, professing concern for the
inconvenience which it must cause them, and earnestly advising them to
hold it up. "Billy", the predecessor of John Bull, as a typical
Englishman, opens the poem with a gibe at the "French dogs", who "do
nothing but drink wine". "Frenchy" does not deny the soft impeachment,
but retorts that he considers it better to indulge in the juice of the
grape than to swill beer. Then, by an abrupt transition and, if with
rhyme, without any special reason, he compares red-haired Englishmen to
mastiffs. On the strength of that canine similitude, he impresses upon
them the necessity for holding up their tails. He commiserates them on
the additional burden which they have to carry, though not endowed with
the physical vigour of Jacques Thommelin, the strong man of the day. He
warns them against walking abroad in dirty weather; and if, in spite of
the rain, they must take their corn to the mill or gather grapes in the
vineyard, he bids them imitate their four-footed neighbours the dogs,
and hold up their tails to prevent their trailing in the mud. The satire
is not keen, nor is the humour brilliant; and the whole point lies in
the rather scurrilous than apt refrain:--