Charles Mills

“ Knights travel and joust for ladies’ love.
The knights of Spain were, indeed, on every occasion gallant as well as brave. When the heralds of France and England crossed the Pyrenees to proclaim the tournaments, which were to be held in honour of woman’s beauty, there was no lack of Spanish cavaliers to obey the sound, and assert the charms of the dark-eyed maidens of their land. This was their wont during all the ages of chivalry; and so late as the fifteenth century one of them travelled so far as England by command of his mistress, and for her sake wished to run a course with sharp spears. ”

“ Spanish chivalry awakens the most splendid and romantic associations of the mind. Europe, with her active courage,—her jealousy of honour,—her superior religion;—Asia, with her proud and lofty deportment,—her fervid and sublimated imagination, and the magnificent ceremonial of her pomp,—formed the knight of Spain; and, in consequence of this influence of Orientalism on his character, he represents the stateliness of chivalry as perfectly as the English cavalier its adventurousness, and the French its gaiety. ”

“ The Prince was astonished at his apparent presumption, and asked him by what means he could pay so large a sum. “The Kings of France and Castile,” he replied, “are my friends, and will never fail me in a case of necessity. I know a hundred knights of Brittany who would sell their possessions for my liberation; and there is not a woman sitting at her distaff in France who would not labour with her own hands to redeem me from yours.” Du Guesclin was then liberated on his parole of honour, and people gazed with curiosity and respect upon a man who had so noble a sense of his own dignity. ”

“ Near the banner of the Duke of Burgundy, where the conflict raged with most fierceness, the Lord of Pierre-vves and his two sons (one was the new bishop) fell, and no consideration for their chivalry or religious profession saved them from death. The coolness of the Duke of Burgundy excites the praise of the historian; and no apology is thought necessary for his conduct, when on being asked, after the defeat, if they should cease from slaying the Liegeois he replied, “Let them all die together; let no prisoners be made; let none be admitted to ransom.” ”

“ The knight looked to fame as one of the guerdons of his toils: this value of the opinions of others taught him to dread shame and disgrace; and thus that fine sense of morality, that voluntary submission to its maxims which we call honour, became a part of knighthood.
The genius of chivalry was personal, inasmuch as each knight, when not following the banner of his sovereign, was in himself an independent being, acting from his own sense of virtue, and not deriving counsel from, or sharing opprobrium with, others. ”

“ The sword of the cavalier was too often drawn by the church; and in the persecution of the Albigenses the knighthood of France forgot all the generous liberality and mercy of their order. But although the crusades against ferocious Turks and erring Christians took from chivalry much of its gracefulness and beauty, yet a restoring power was found in that love for poetry and romance which for some ages had been spreading itself over the world. ”

“ In the minds of Spanish knights, religion and love were ever blended; and he who, thinking of his mistress, took for his motto the words, “Sin vos, y sin Dios y mi,” (without thee, I am without God, and without myself,) was not thought guilty of impiety. In romantic gallantry the Spaniard was a very perfect knight. Garcia Perez de Vargas, who lived in the thirteenth century, was a splendid exemplar of Spanish chivalry. His valour excited the envy of men of nobler birth, who displayed the meanness of their spirit in questioning his title to bear arms. ”

“ The sports of chivalry were so elegant and graceful that we might have supposed the refined Italians would have embraced them in all their circumstances. But the arena of the Coliseum, so admirably adapted for a tournament, was used for Moorish games. The matrons and virgins of Rome, arrayed in all their bravery, were seated in its ample galleries, and beheld, not a gallant and hurtless encounter between two parties of knights with lances of courtesy, but a succession of sanguinary conflicts between cavaliers and bulls. ”

“ In northern Italy no knightlike humanities softened the vindictiveness of the Italian mind. Warriors never admitted prisoners to ransom. The annals of their contests are destitute of those graceful courtesies which shed such a beautiful lustre over the contests of England and France. No cavalier ever thought of combating for his lady’s sake, and a lady’s favour was never blended with his heraldic insignia. There were no regular defiances to war as in other countries: honour, that animating principle of chivalry, was not known ”

“ Alone in his chamber, and the door closed, the knight, wearied by this time with ceremony and fasting, ate and drank merrily. He then doffed much of his array, which was distributed among the officers of the household, and put on a robe of blue with the white lace of silk hanging on the shoulder, similar to that which was worn in the days of Henry V.; for however degenerated the world might have become, they could not for shame’s sake despise all the forms of chivalry. The ceremony, of inauguration concluded by expressions of thanks and courtesy. ”

“ Six men clad as foresters stood at different parts; and in the midst of the forest was a castle apparently made of gold, and before the gate sat a gentleman splendidly apparelled, weaving a garland of roses for the prize. The spectators imagined that the pageant was drawn into the court by a lion and an antelope, who were led by men in the guise of savages. When the pageant rested before the Queen, the foresters blew their horns, and from different parts of the forest the four knights issued armed at all points and mounted on their war-steeds. ”

“ But it is in the polish of modern society that the graces of chivalry are most pleasingly displayed. The knight was charmed into courtesy by the gentle influence of woman, and the air of mildness which she diffused has never died away. While such things exist, can we altogether assent to the opinion of a celebrated author, that “the age of chivalry is gone?” Many of its forms and modes have disappeared; fixed governments and wise laws have removed the necessity for, and quenched the spirit of, knight-errantry and romance ”

“ He who was invested with the military belt was no longer the mere soldier of ambition and rapine, but he was taught to couch his lance for objects of defence and protection, rather than for those of hostility. He was the friend of the distressed, of widows and orphans, and of all who suffered from tyranny and oppression. The doctrine of Christian benevolence, that all who name the name of Christ are brothers, gave beauty and grace to the principles of fraternity, which were the Gothic inheritance of knights, and therefore the wars of the middle ages were distinguished for their humanities. ”

“ The triumph of chivalry over all preceding systems of opinions was complete, when imagination refined the fierceness of passion into generous and gentle affection,—a refinement so perfect and beautiful, that subsequent times, with all their vaunted improvements in letters and civilisation, are obliged to revert their eyes to the by-gone days of the shield and the lance for the most pleasing and graceful pictures of lady-love. ”

“ For several centuries chivalry shed but few and transient gleams of light over the gloomy waste of Italian history, and I can only select one event which paints in beautiful colours the spirit of romantic gallantry. The wife of Lothaire, King of Italy from the year 945 to 948, was Adelais, a princess of the house of Burgundy. Lothaire was deposed, perhaps murdered by his minister, Berenger; and the usurper persecuted, with the cruelty of fear, Adelais, who has been described by monkish chroniclers, and chivalry will not contradict the character, as being young and beautiful. ”

“ Except in the occasional adventurousness of knights-errant, chivalry was but once concerned in repressing the evils of the time, and interwoven with the interesting circumstances of that occasion is one of the most amusing stories in all the long annals of knighthood. The citizens, in conveying their merchandizes from one place to another, suffered dreadfully from the rapine of the barons; and finding the weapons used by common people were an insufficient protection, they wisely and boldly armed themselves in the manner of their enemies. ”

“ There, every one swelling with pride and rancour, scorns to cast a look on his inferiors, disdains his equals, and proudly rivals his superiors. The squire endeavours to outshine the knight, the knight the baron, the baron the earl, the earl the king, in dress and magnificence. ”

“ The military features of chivalry had been rudely marred in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, and by the days of James I. not a lineament remained. The graceful sports of chivalry had been sustained by the bold and vigorous Henry VIII., and romance could not but be pleasing to a maiden queen. With Prince Henry the tournament died. Mightier questions than those which knighthood could resolve were before the world; and there was nothing in the bearing of the friends of Charles I., misnamed Cavaliers, to which the character of chivalric can be applied. ”

“ He married at the age of fifteen, and then applied himself more vigorously than ever to study, particularly the continental languages: but to fence and to ride the great horse were his principal ambition, for such were the exercises in which the chivalry of his time were educated,—and he aspired to fame in every pursuit. From the same feeling of vanity that urged him to publish his deistical dogmas, he complacently says of himself that no man understood the use of his weapon better than himself, or had more dexterously availed himself thereof on all occasions. ”

“ The Cid’s happiness was soon alloyed by the death of his son Rodrigo; a young man whose military spirit was so fine and gallant, that the Christians regarded him as the hope of Spain. The Cid was speedily called from private cares and sorrows to a more important undertaking than any he had been ever engaged in. He headed the Christian troops against Toledo; and those troops embraced not only the flower of Spanish chivalry, but many knights from France, Italy, and Germany; so important to the general fate of religion and arms was the capture of Toledo considered. ”

“ In the course of time, as the frame of society [Pg 150] became more settled, the arts of peace smoothed the stern fierceness of chivalry, and the page was the honorary servant of the lord or his lady, in the proud ceremonial of nobility, and never mixed in war. He continued to be a person of gentle birth, and his dress was splendid; circumstances extremely favourable to that singular state of manners which permitted a woman, without any loss of her good name, to follow him she admired in the disguise of a gentle page, and gradually to win his affections by the deep devotion of her love. ”

“ It swept away those institutions which were no longer sustained by virtue and genius; and the settlement of the Gothic kingdoms was the commencement of the new glories of the world. The successors of the Romans were not entirely occupied in the fierce struggles of ambition. A new intellect was impressed upon Europe, wild as nature before it is tamed into artificial society, but rich, vigorous, and beautiful. As the new states of the West took a firm and enduring shape, as the tendency of human nature to improvement gradually became visible, intellectual talent was more and more esteemed. ”

“ One tent was admirable for the beauty of its decorations, and more so for its purpose. It contained seven noble ladies, who, at the request of the mother of Sueno, devoted themselves to attend upon such of the knights as should be wounded in the joust. At the time appointed, Sueno de Quinones appeared in the lists with his nine companions, all arrayed in the most splendid tourneying harness, the enamoured knight himself bearing round his neck the chain of his mistress, with the motto, which his friends also wore on some part of their armour, “Il faut délibérer.” ”

“ Austrians would doff their armour, the Hungarians would fight them hand to hand.
The danger became more and more imminent, and the Germans had no hope of escape; for they could not expect, as if they had been fighting with the chivalry of France, that a surrender of their horses and arms, and an honourable treaty for their own persons’ ransom, would satisfy the foe. ”

“ It has been thought for the glory of the nation to represent the struggle as of ceaseless duration for seven long centuries, and too fierce to allow of the sheathing of the sword: but these alliances were so common, that Spain often presented the appearance of a number of petty states, each attempting to draw the others into its vortex, rather than the general cause of the Cross warring with the Crescent. Independently of these alliances there was scarcely a Christian cavalier of fame who did not in the course of his military career wield his good sword in the ranks of the Musulmans. ”

“ Stratagems were as common as open and glorious battle; and private injuries were revenged by assassination and not by the fair and manly joust à l’outrance: and yet when a man pledged his word for the performance of any act, and wished his sincerity to be believed, he always swore by the parola di cavaliere, e non di cortigiano; so general and forcible was the acknowledgment of chivalry’s moral superiority. ”

“ The patriarchal system of manners, shaped and sanctioned by Christianity, formed the fabric of chivalry; and romance, with its many-coloured hues, gave it light and beauty. The early ages of Europe gaily moved in all the wildness and vigour of youth; imagination freshened and heightened every pleasure; the world was a vision, and life a dream. ”

“ Truth does not cast many gleams on Bernardo del Carpio, the next in time and rank of Spanish knights. If we may credit the historians of his country, it was he who nourished, in the Asturias, the plant of national liberty; for when Alfonso the Chaste would have made the land over which he ruled part of the dominions of Charlemagne, the nobility, headed by Bernardo, repelled the invader, and annihilated the French peerage at Fontarabbia. ”

“ The court of the Dukes of Burgundy was so high in fame for the lofty daring and gallant grace of chivalric emprise, that when Constantinople fell under the Moslem yoke, the hearts of the noble Burgundian knights glowed with the bold and pious desire of recovering the metropolis of eastern Christendom. The desire perished, for it was not supported by the other powers of Europe; and Burgundy, deprived of its hope of leading the lances of the West, in a [Pg 214] cause so well worthy of them, is only interesting in the history of chivalry for its gracefulness and splendour. ”