Chivalry, it is true, was so often a mixture of clownishness and licentiousness, its practice was so much less refined than its theory, that in opposition to those historians who have sung its praises others have doubted whether its influence was on the whole for good or for evil. For, although the knights vowed especially to protect widows and orphans, and respect and honour ladies, yet it was precisely under their _régime_ that, when cities were taken and castles stormed, women were subjected to the most brutal treatment. The difficulty is best solved by distinguishing between two kinds of Chivalry—the Militant and the Poetic. The militant type of knight-errantry was less inspired by the desire to benefit womankind than by ambition to gratify silly masculine vanity. So thoroughly was the mediæval mind imbued with ideas of war that these knights could not conceive even of love except in a military guise. So they rode about the country in quest of adventure, ostensibly in the service of an adored mistress, but really to find an outlet, in times of peace, for pent-up military energy and ambition. Spain and Southern France were the principal home of Chivalry Militant, because there a warm climate and smiling nature offered most favourable conditions to wandering knights in quest of adventure. Fortunately the world possesses, in _Don Quixote_, a lifelike picture of knight-errantry; for although the aim of Cervantes was to make fun, not so much of Chivalry as of trashy contemporaneous romances of Chivalry, yet in doing this he could not avoid depicting the comic side of the institution itself, concerning which it is indeed _difficile satiram non scribere_. It appears to have been the custom of these knights to wander about the country interfering in every quarrel, and, in default of a disturbance, creating one. Each knight had a Dulcinea, whom he had perhaps never seen, but in whose honour and for whose love he engages in all these combats. And whenever he meets another knight he forthwith challenges him to admit that this Dulcinea, whom the other has of course never seen, is the most beautiful lady in the world. The other knight echoes the challenge in behalf of _his_ Dulcinea; and the result is a combat in which the victor, by the inexorable logic of superior strength, proves the superior beauty of his chosen lady-love. The vanquished knight is then sent as prisoner to the victor’s mistress with a message of love. The Germans do not often originate anything; but if they take up an idea or institution they work it more thoroughly than any other nation. So with the fantastic side of Chivalry, which was introduced after the second crusade, during which German knights had come into close contact with French knights. “Spain,” says Professor Scherr, “has imagined a Don Quixote, but Germany has really produced one.”