Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/107

Rh before all the world as the champion of right, who does not hesitate to sacrifice himself for his people?

How, otherwise, are we to explain the surprising persistence of these plans for princely duels? Richard II of England offers to fight, together with his uncles, the dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, against the king of France, Charles VI, and his uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Burgundy and Berry. Louis of Orléans defies the king of England, Henry IV. Henry V of England challenges the dauphin before marching upon Agincourt. Above all, the duke of Burgundy displayed an almost frenzied attachment to this mode of settling a question. In 1425 he challenges Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in connection with the question of Holland. The motive, as always, is expressly formulated in these terms: “To prevent Christian bloodshed and destruction of the people, on whom my heart has compassion,” I wish “that by my own body, this quarrel may be settled, without proceeding by means of wars, which would entail that many noblemen and others, both of your army and of mine, would end their days pitifully.”

All was ready for the combat: the magnificent armour and the state dresses, the pavilions, the standards, the banners, the armorial tabards for the heralds, everything richly adorned with the duke’s blazons and with his emblems, the flint-and- steel and the Saint Andrew’s cross. The duke had gone in for a course of training “both by abstinence in the matter of food and by taking exercise to keep him in breath.” He practised fencing every day in his park of Hesdin with the most expert masters. The detailed expenses entailed by this affair are found in the accounts published by de La Borde, but the combat did not take place.

This did not prevent the duke, twenty years later, from again wishing to decide a question touching Luxemburg by a single combat with the duke of Saxony. Towards the close of his life he is still vowing to engage in a hand-to-hand combat with the Grand Turk. We find this custom of challenges between sovereigns reappearing as late as the hey-day of the Renaissance. To deliver Italy from Cesare Borgia, Francesco Gonzaga offers to fight the latter with sword and dagger. Charles V himself, on two occasions, in 1526 and in 1536, formally proposes to