Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/86

64 A castellan musters his garrison; there are but fifteen horses, lean and old beasts, most of them unshod. He puts two men on each horse, but of the men also most are blind of one eye or lame. They set out to seize the enemy’s laundry in order to patch the captain’s clothes. A captured cow is courteously returned to a hostile captain at his request. Reading the description of a nocturnal march, one feels as though surrounded by the silence and the freshness of the night. It is not saying too much that here military France is announcing herself in literature, which will give birth to the types of the “mousquetaire,” the “grognard,” and the “poilu.” The feudal knight is merging into the soldier of modern times; the universal and religious ideal is becoming national and military. The hero of the book releases his prisoners without a ransom, on condition that they shall become good Frenchmen. Having risen to great dignities, he yearns for the old life of adventure and liberty.

Le Jouvencel is an expression of true French sentiment. Literature in the Burgundian sphere, being more old-fashioned, more feudal and more solemn, would not have been able as yet to create so realistic a type of a knight. By the side of the Jouvencel, the figure of the Hainault pattern knight of the fifteenth century, Jacques de Lalaing, is an antique curiosity, more or leas modelled on the knights-errant of a preceding age. Le Livre des Faits du bon Chevalier Messire Jacques de Lalaing is far more concerned with tournaments and jousts than with real war.

In the Jouvencel we find a remarkable portrayal, hardly to be surpassed, of the psychology of warlike courage of a simple and touching kind. “It is a joyous thing, is war… You love your comrade so in war. When you see that your quarrel is just and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eye. A great sweet feeling of loyalty and of pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our Creator. And then you prepare to go and die or live with him, and for love not to abandon him. And out of that there arises such a delectation, that he who has not tasted it is not fit to say what a delight it is. Do you think that a man who does that fears death? Not at all; for he feels so strengthened, he is