As a rule, tournaments were proclaimed, that is to say published, _à cor et à cri_ (Figs. 130 and 131), either when a promotion of knights, or a royal marriage, or a solemn entry of a sovereign into a town took place; and the character of these chivalrous festivals changed according to the time and place at and in which they occurred. The arms used on these occasions varied in a similar manner. In France, the tournament lance was made of the lightest and straightest wood, either fir, aspen, or sycamore, pointed with steel, and with a pennant floating from the end; whilst in Germany and in Scotland they were made of the heaviest and toughest wood, with a long iron pear-shaped point. The tournament must not be confounded with the _tilt_ or _joust_ (from the Latin _juxta_), which was a single hand-to-hand combat, nor with the _passage of arms_, in which several combatants, both on foot and on horseback, were engaged, and imitated the attack and defence of some military position, some pass, or some narrow mountainous defile. Tilts usually formed part of a tournament, and marked its close; but there were also more complicated tilts, open to all comers, which lasted for several days, and were termed _joutes plénières_. As the ladies were the life and soul of these tilts, the knights always terminated the proceedings by a special passage of arms which was termed the _lance des dames_; they were always ready to pay this homage to the charms of the fair sex, and frequently fought for them with sword, axe, and dagger. [Illustration: Fig. 131.--Here is portrayed a herald holding the banners of the four referees.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Tournaments of King René” (Fifteenth Century).] [Illustration: Fig. 132.--The Banners and Helmets are ranged round a cloister, and are then distributed by the judges, in the presence of the ladies and those taking part in the tournament.--Miniature from the “Tournois du Roi René,” MS. of the Fifteenth Century, in the National Library, Paris.]