the spirit in which it was carried out, or the usages that regulated every detail, from the armour of the knights to the smallest incidents of the ceremonial. In its pages illustrations reproduce with exact truthfulness the helmets of the knights with barred vizors and leathern shields, their maces, their swords, and their _hourts_, intended to protect the croup and the hind legs of their chargers (Fig. 136). Its text, written with great care and in an elegant hand, records the rules to be observed, in accordance with knighthood’s truest spirit, at the different stages of the combat and the tournament, and minutely describes all their preliminaries and accessories, the giving and the accepting of a challenge, the mutual exchange of gages, the presentation of warrants of nobility by the kings-at-arms, the distribution of the coats-of-arms or insignia of the two parties to the strife, the entry of the nobles, and the bestowal of the prizes upon the conquerors by the queen of the tournament. [Illustration: Fig. 136.--“Designs of armour for the head, the body, and the arms, helmets and streamers (called in Flanders and Brabant _hacheures_ or _hachements_), coats-of-arms, and swords for tournaments.”--From Miniatures in the “Tournaments of King René” (Fifteenth Century).] King René’s book is a document all the more valuable to an historian of the customs of chivalry, in that it was written at an epoch when they still existed in all their splendour; although signs of their decadence had already showed themselves. That punctilious sovereign, Philippe le Bel, with his court of lawyers and usurers, had already dealt chivalry a crushing blow by the regulations be drew up for the better government of single combats and gages of battle. Between his reign and that of Charles VII. this decadence became more marked. Commerce had made much progress, the wealth of the middle classes had much increased, and the monarchy had acquired a preponderating influence, to the detriment both of feudalism and chivalry, which began simultaneously to decline; the reign of Louis XI., a reign of espionage and of cunning, was fatal to them--thenceforward their little remaining prestige rapidly waned and soon entirely expired. François I. made several fruitless attempts to rekindle the dying embers of chivalry, and, at a later period, Henri IV. and Louis XIV. vainly essayed, with many brilliant pageantries and passages of arms, to quicken once more the phantom of the noble institution which came into existence with the Middle Ages, and with them passed away. [Illustration] MILITARY ORDERS.