Part 44

Ridiculous as modern knights, whether of town or country, have been made upon the stage, it is indisputable that in some cases the ridicule has not been what painters call “loaded,” and the reality was in itself a caricature. I have read somewhere of one city gentleman, who was knighted during his shrievalty, and who forthwith emancipated himself a little from business, and aired his chivalrous “sir” in gay company. He was once, however, sorely puzzled on receiving a note of invitation from a lady whose soirées were the especial delight of her guests, and whose note ended with the initials, so absurdly placed at the termination of an invitation in English. R. S. V. P., “réponse, s’il vous plait.” The newly-coined knight, after allusions to the pressure of business, accepted the hospitality offered him through the note, remarking at the same time, that “all work and no play made Jack a dull boy,” and that he knew nothing more to his taste, after a long day’s application, than what her ladyship’s note appeared to present to him in the initials at its foot; namely, a Regular Small Vist Party. If this anecdote be not apocryphal, I suspect that the knight’s remark may have sprung less from ignorance than humor, and that his reading of the initials was meant as a censure upon an absurd fashion.

While speaking of city knights at home, and their humor, I will avail myself of the opportunity to give an instance of wit in a poor chevalier of the city of Paris, whose whole wealth consisted of a few unproductive acres near the capital, and whose son had just married a wealthy heiress of very low degree. “Il fait bien,” said the old knight, “il fume mes terres!”

This was hardly courteous; but elevated courtesy was never wanting among true knights, in the very rudest of times.

Strange contrasts of feeling were sometimes exhibited. Thus, when the English were besieging Orleans, they grew suddenly tired of their bloody work, on Christmas-day, and asked for a truce while they ate their pudding. The request was not only readily granted, but the French knights, hearing that the day was dull in the English camp, obtained the permission of the bastard Dunois, to send over some musicians to enliven the melancholy leaguers. The band played lustily during the whole period of the truce, but the last notes had scarcely ceased, and the “Godons” as Jeanne Darc rather corruptively called our great sires, who were too much addicted to swearing, had hardly ceased uttering their thanks for the musical entertainment, when their cannonade was renewed by the besiegers with such vigor, that the French knights swore--harmony had never before been paid in such hard coin.

There was little ill-feeling consequent upon this. The pages in either army were allowed to amuse themselves by slaying each other in a two days’ duel, presided over by the respective generals-in-chief. This was chivalrous proof that neither party bore malice, and they beat out each other’s brains on the occasion, in testimony of universal good-will, with as much delighted feeling as if they had all been Irishmen. A further proof of absence of individual rancor may be seen in the fact, that Suffolk sent a gift of pigs, dates, and raisins, for the _dessert_ of Dunois; and the latter acknowledged the present by forwarding to the English general some fur for his robe--Suffolk having complained bitterly of the cold of that memorable February, 1429.

This reminds me of a similar interchange of courtesy between French and English antagonists, in later times. When brave Elliot was defending Gibraltar from gallant Crillon, the former, who never ate meat, suffered greatly (as did his scurvy-stricken men) from a scarcity of vegetables. Crillon had more than he wanted, and he sent of his superabundance, most liberally, to the foe whom he respected. A whole cart-load of carrots and compliments made general and garrison glad, and Elliot was as profuse in his gratitude as he was bound to be. It may be remembered that similar exchanges of courtesy and creature-comforts took place at Sebastopol. Sir Edmund Lyons sent Admiral Nachimoff a fat buck, a gift which the large-minded hero of the Sinope butchery repaid by a hard Dutch cheese. It may be said too that the buck would have been more appropriately sent to the half-starved English heroes who were rotting in the trenches.

There were some other naval knights of old, touching whom I may here say a word.

The history of the sea-kings or sea-knights, whose noble vocation it was to descend from the north with little but ballast in the holds of their vessels, and to return thither heavily laden with plunder and glory, is tolerably well known to the majority of readers. The story of the Flemish pirates, who, nearly eight centuries ago, carried terror to, and brought spoil from the Mediterranean, is far less familiar. This story is well illustrated in the “Biographie des hommes remarquables de la Flandres Occidentale,” of whom the authors are M. Octave Delepierre, the accomplished Belgian consul in this country, and Mr. Carton.

The period is a warm June evening of the year 1097. Off the coast of Cilicia, two large vessels, belonging to the Emperor Alexis Comnenus, and manned by Constantinopolitan Greeks, were surrounded and attacked by ten fast-sailing but small vessels, belonging to the dreaded “Greek Pirates,” whose name alone brought terror with the sound. On the prow of each light bark was a rudely sculptured figure of a lion; from the summit of the tall mast was displayed a green pennant, which was never hauled down, for the good reason that the pirates never attacked but where success seemed certain; and if defeat menaced them they could easily find safety in flight.

There was scarcely a place on the coast which they had not, for ten years past, visited; and many merchants purchased exemption from attack by paying a species of very liberal black mail. It was beneath the dignity of an emperor to buy safety from piratical rovers, and they had little respect for his vessels, in consequence.

M. Delepierre informs us that these Flemish pirates had been, originally, merchants, but that they thought it more profitable to steal than to barter; and found “skimming the seas,” as the phrase went, far more lucrative than living by the dull precepts of trade. Their three principal chiefs were Zegher of Bruges, Gheraert of Courtrai, and Wimer (whose name still lives in Wimereux) of Boulogne. The force they had under them amounted to four hundred intrepid men, who were at once sailors and soldiers, and who are described as being so skilful that they could with one hand steer the ship, and with the other wield the boarding-hatchet. It will be seen that our Laureate’s exhortation to knavish tradesmen to lay down their weights and their measures, and to mend their ways by taking to the vocation of arms, had here a practical illustration. In the present case, M. Delepierre suggests that the pirates were, probably, not less honest men than the Greeks. The latter were ostensibly on their way to succor the Crusaders, but Alexis was a double dealer, and occasionally despatched forces against the infidel, which forces turned aside to assault those Christian neighbors of his, who were too powerful to be pleasant in such a vicinity, and to get rid of whom was to be devoutly desired, and, at any cost, accomplished. The foreign policy of Alexis was as villanously void of principle as that of any government under a more advanced period of Christian civilization.

The Greek crews had been summoned to surrender. Gheraert of Courtrai had called to them to that effect through his leathern speaking-trumpet. He probably knew little of Greek, and the Orientals could not have comprehended his Flemish. We may conclude that his summons was in a macaronic sort of style; in which two languages were used to convey one idea. The Hellenes replied to it, however it may have sounded, by hurling at the Flemings a very hurricane of stones.

The stout men from Flanders were not long in answering in their turn. “They put into play,” says M. Delepierre, “their mechanical slings. These were large baskets full of stones fastened to the end of an elevated balance, the motion of which flung them to some distance. They had other means of destruction, in enormous engines, which hurled beams covered with iron, and monster arrows wrapped in flaming rosin. With scythe-blades attached to long poles, they severed the ropes and destroyed the sails, and then flinging out their grapnels they made off with their prize.”

To this point the present battle had not yet come. It had lasted an hour, the Greeks had suffered most by the means of attack above noticed; and they had inflicted but trifling injury, comparatively, upon the men of the green pennant. They refused, however, to surrender, but prepared to fly. Wimer saw the preparatory movement, and, in a loud voice, exclaimed:--“A dozen divers!”

Twelve men, quitting their posts, leaped over the side of the boat, carrying enormous _tarières_ (augers) with them. They disappeared beneath the waves; appeared for a moment or two again above the surface, in order to draw breath; once more plunged downward; and, finally, at the end of ten minutes, climbed again into their small vessel, exclaiming, “Master, it is done!”

The twelve divers had established twelve formidable leaks in the larger of the two Greek vessels, and as it began to sink, the crew agreed to surrender. The Green Pirates seized all that was on board that and the other ship. In the latter, stripped of everything of value, they allowed the two Greek crews to sail away; and then proceeded toward the coast with their booty, consisting of rich stuffs, provisions and arms. There was far more than they needed for their own wants; and so, for the nonce, they turned traders again. They sold at a good price what they had unscrupulously stolen, and the profits realized by the Flemish rovers were enough to make all honest, but poor traders, desire to turn corsairs.

Zegher ascended the Cydnus, in order to pay a professional visit to Tarsis, and was not a little surprised, on approaching the city, to see formidable preparations made to resist him. On drawing closer, however, the pirate-leader found that Tarsis was in possession of the army of Flemish crusaders under the great Count Baldwin; and each party welcomed the other with joyous shouts of “Long live Flanders!” “Long live the Lion!” The arrival of the fleet was of the greatest advantage to the Flemings, who, though they had suffered less than the French, Italian, and German legions, by whom they had been preceded, and had been progressively triumphing since they had landed, needed succors both of men and material, and lo! here were the Green Pirates ready to furnish both, for a consideration. There was abundance of feasting that night, and a very heavy sermon in the morning.

Baldwin was himself the preacher. His style was a mixture of exhorting with the threatening; and he was so little complimentary as to tell the Green pirates that they were nothing better than brigands, and were undoubtedly on their way to the devil. He added that he would have treated them as people of such a character, going such a way, only that they were his countrymen. And then he wept at the very thought of their present demerits, and their possible destiny. This practice of weeping was inherited by knights from the old Greek heroes, and a chevalier in complete steel might shed tears till his suit was rusty, without the slightest shame. The exhortation continued without appearing to make any sensible impression upon the rovers. Baldwin, however, pointed his address at the end, with an observation that if they would join him in his career of arms, he would give them lands that should make lords of the whole of them. Upon this observation the Green Pirates, with a little modest allusion to their unworthiness, declared that they were eager, one and all, to turn crusaders.

Each man attached a small green cross, in cloth, to the top of his sleeve; and joyfully followed Baldwin to the field. The count was no more able to keep his word than a recruiting sergeant who promises a recruit that he shall be made a field-marshal. Nor was he to blame, for the greater part of his new allies perished; but enough were left to make a score of very doughty knights.

Admirable sailors were the Northmen, especially the Anglo-Normans, whether with respect to manœuvring or courage. “Close quarters” formed the condition on which they liked to be with an enemy. “Grapple and board” was their system as soon as they had created a little confusion among the enemy with their cross-bows and slings. The “mariners” in those days fought in armor, with heavy swords, spears, and battle-axes. They were well furnished too with bags of quick-lime, the contents of which they flung into the eyes of their adversaries, when they could get to windward of them, an end which they always had in view.

The first regular naval battle fought between the English and the 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.