XXXii THE MASTER OF GAME
forty lances, the two nobles, bent upon adventure, started for their famous expedition into heathen
Prussia. The shores of the Baltic were then the scene of constant hostilities, for not only were
the Teutonic knights engaged in a long continued struggle with the heathen inhabitants of what is
now East Prussia, but there was fighting galore with the rulers of Poland.

Marienburg had but recently been founded as the headquarters of the knights by Geoffrey de
Hohenlohe, the ancestor of the princely family that is still flourishing ; and thither the two Gascons
attended by their men-at-arms, made their way.

That Gaston had started out without much preparation for the expedition would appear from

the fact that when passing Bruges he had to borrow there 24,000 écus, and Vaisette quotes a letter
written by Gaston from Kénigsberg instructing his Council at home to see that this loan was paid.
Gaston's warlike experiences while on this expedition are of less interest than his sporting achieve-
ments. These, very briefly told, he has incorporated in the second chapter of his hunting-book
which deals with the reindeer, an animal which he says he saw in Norway and Sweden. And
thereto hangs a tale showing how errors are propagated by blindly copying transcripts without
consulting originals. The sentence runs: “J’en ai veu en Nourvégne et Xuédene et en ha oultre
mer, mes en romain pays en ay je pou veuz” (p. 25), by which he wished to convey that he saw the
reindeer in Norway and Sweden and beyond the sea, but in the Roman countries (meaning France)
he saw few. Verard, the Paris printer, published in the opening years of the sixteenth century the
first, but very faulty, edition of Gaston’s ‘‘La Chasse,” and in it the author’s words “ou veuz”
were devilled into ‘‘A/us veu,” the sentence running : “ J’en ai veu en Morienne et Puedene oultre
mer; mais en romain pays en ay je plus veu,” the very contrary to what Gaston stated. Thus it
happened that this mistake, which peopled France with more reindeer than there were in Norway
and Sweden, was copied from book to book, even Buffon accepting it as true and enlarging upon it
in his once famous ‘‘ Natural History.”

Gaston and Captal were not absent more than a year, and probably their return was hastened by
the news of the outbreak, on May 21, 1358, of the peasant insurrection under Jacques Bonhomme,
known as the Jacguerie.

Their arrival on the scene of what was one of the most formidable socialistic disturbances of
the time seems to have been well timed, for notwithstanding the smallness of their retinue, which
Froissart gives as sixty, but which was probably augmented by hastily summoned troops from
Béarn and by the Orleans forces, they managed to relieve three hundred noble ladies and the Duke
and Duchess of Orleans, who were in imminent peril at Meaux. The insurgents were routed by
Gaston and Captal, and more than seven thousand were put to the sword. These must have been
some of the darkest days France has ever experienced ; what with the terrible ravages of the
pestilence, and the appalling misery that had followed in the central and northern parts the war
with England—Paris, as Petrarch tells us, being a fearful vast solitude—the whole of the south was
being ravaged by this sanguinary peasant revolt. Gaston took a leading part in the suppression,
thus becoming the hero of the day, and it speaks well for the beneficent rule of his own principalities
that there no sign of discontent manifested itself. Of his deeds of arms we need not speak, for
Froissart has not forgotten them when describing the interminable wars between Count de Foix
and the Count de Armagnac, about which he tells so many picturesque tales. In one of these he
leagued himself with the Duke of Lancaster against the Armagnacs and the Sire d’Albert,! so that
Gaston fought with as well as against the English.

One of his last feats of arms, which took place in the year following the death of his son, bound
the ties of friendship existing between Gaston and Philip the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, yet
closer. For the latter was heir-presumptive to the throne of Flanders, so that when the rebels
chased their reigning lord from Bruges, Gaston joined the King’s forces and contributed to the
victory of Rosebecq (1382) which re-established the dynasty.

In the subsequent nine years Gaston seems to have attended principally to home affairs, and in
the last four he composed his famous sporting treatise. That he was inspired in this effo by the

1 Rymer, vol. vii. p, 615.

   

 

GASTON DE FOIX AND HIS BOOK XXXI11
s ° eal
la Buigne we know fairly positively,
: Stee : B
e several poetic passages from the Roman de Déduzts (see Bibliography : Gace de eae
Le osed by this sport-loving First Chaplain of King John during that Se a ee
En oe Gaston tells us in his prologue that he commenced his book on me Tf . hae) cae
e Have been engaged on it when Froissart paid him his memorable twelve wee - ss
ee year, a visit that contributed so much valuable material to two of ee vo ees she
imi Sal famous meeting of Gaston an arles vi. of Fr:
i table Chronicles? In 1389 occurred the a
oe where the former exhibited a degree of prodigal splendour that would have ruined
twice over the finances of any ordinary prince.
Few of the great nobles of those days came
for if death did not surprise them on the battlefiel

for he rendered into
recently composed verses of Gace de

to peaceable ends, and the Foix were no exception,
d or at sieges, it claimed its victims when in the

;
pursuit "of sport. Gaston’s ancestor, Roger IL, coe to his end at a stag-hunt ; ae. os
Pierre de Béarn, was struck down by a mysterious form of madness in ey ee
fight with a fierce bear; and Ivain, one of Gaston’s four natural sons, Wes one of the victims ae
came to such terrible ends in 1392 at a ballet danced at the Hotel de Saint Paul by young nobles
before Charles vi., when their disguises caught fire, the King himself escaping only Dy a miracle.
Gaston himself succumbed to the results of a bear-hunt. Starting out from Orthéz Castle one
particularly hot day of August 1391 to hunt a great bear in the woods ci Sauveterre, three leagues
out on the road to Pampeluna, it proved such an arduous chase that it was late in the gitennoey
when the bear was taken, After attending to the curée, Gaston repaired to the nearest inn, and
while in the act of extending his hands to have cold water poured over them, a fit of apoplexy
terminated his career. He was buried—the funeral taking place only on October 12—in the
Church of the Cordeliers at Orthéz close to where his unfortunate son lay.
Everybody who has read the Flemish chronicler’s account of Gaston will remember that he gives
many a detail illustrating Gaston’s imperious not to say fierce temperament, but fomarost of his
trespasses he has an extenuating explanation that is not always in accord with modernideas. This
chronicler says that “in doing of justice he is right stern,” but that nevertheless he “is the most
rightful lord that is now living.” One must not forget that Gaston lived at the culminating
point of feudal institutions, holding centred in his hand autocratic power that was as unlimited
as that of the most tyrannical Czar, with wealth that in his latter days far outstripped that of
most contemporary rulers, surrounded by envious foes, who, he knew well, were only too ready
to let the assassin’s dagger or poison accomplish what their own strength of arms could not
achieve. One must remember, moreover, that suspicion and, in the case of detection, flerce
reprisals, were in keeping with the spirit of that turbulent and bloodthirsty age. For this reason
misdeeds such as Gaston’s must not be criticised in the light of our twentieth-century civilisation,
but rather in that of a more barbarous age. His striking down with his dagger in a fit of
uncontrolled anger his loyal kinsman, because he refused to surrender into Gaston’s hands the
fortress of Lourdes which had been entrusted to him by the King of England, was a crime
which to-day would be as inexcusable as was his cruel treatment of another cousin, the Viscount
de Chateaubon, or the putting to death of fifteen young nobles of his own Court on the discovery
of their supposed implication in a plot of his only son to poison him—a plot to which the perfectly
innocent youth himself fell victim, dying by the father’s hand. Froissart, in recounting in his
inimitable way that tragic event and the treachery of the villainous King of Navarre, the youth's
uncle, ascribes young Gaston’s death to an accident, the presence of the knife in the father’s hand
being accounted for by the latter's use of it to trim his nails. This view is not shared by one

1 Among the occasional chronological mistakes made by Froissart are his references to Gaston’s age. In one
place he says Gaston was in his fifty-ninth year at the time of his visit to Orthéz, which commenced on Noy. 23,
1388, and elsewhere he mentions that Gaston was 63 years old when he died in May 1391, which in itself cannot
be possible if the former statement is correct. Asa matter of fact neither is correct, for as Gaston was born in 1331
he was in his fifty-eighth year when Froissart was at Orthéz, and had just completed his sixtieth year when he died.
ee to Lavallée this occurred in the month of May 1391, but more recent researches show that it happened

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