Riding on horseback was not only practised, but was carried to the highest degree of perfection, among the nations of antiquity; and the use of chariots was, in former times, almost general in war and on certain state occasions. The Romans, and in imitation of them the Gauls who prided themselves on being skilful carriage-builders, had several sorts of wheeled vehicles. Those adopted by the Romans and the Gauls, but discountenanced by the Franks, who preferred to ride on horseback, were the _carruca_, or _carruque_, with two wheels and a pair of horses (Fig. 72), richly ornamented with gold, silver, and ivory; the _pilentum_, a four-wheel carriage with a cloth canopy; the _petoritum_, an open carriage suitable for rapid travelling; the _cisium_, a basket-carriage drawn by mules, and used for long journeys; and finally, various carts--the _plaustrum_, the _serracum_, the _benne_, the _camuli_ (trucks), &c. These last, which were chiefly employed as field-carts, continued in use even after pleasure-carriages had entirely disappeared. There remained, however, independent of mule-litters, the _basterna_ and _carpentum_, state-carriages of the Merovingian period, but only queens and ladies of high rank, who were unequal to long journeys on horseback, indulged in such means of locomotion, while men--even kings and high personages--would have blushed to be conveyed like “holy relics,” as picturesquely expressed by one of Charlemagne’s courtiers; but certainly not at the period of the “lazy kings,” when, as Boileau has well said,-- “In Paris, four oxen, in pace soft and slow, Drew the indolent monarch, when airing he’d go.” “Chivalry,” wrote M. le Marquis de Varenne, “the exercises of which were the image of war, rendered horsemanship a new art always indispensable in the education of the nobility; and _chevalier_ soon became synonymous with a man of good birth.” “The Book of Facts,” by the “Bon Chevalier Messire Jean le Maingre, called _Baucicaut_, Marshal of France,” written in the beginning of the fifteenth century, enumerates the exercises which a youth aspiring to the title of a gentleman had to undergo:--“They endeavoured to leap (_sailler_) upon a charger, fully armed; _item_, leaped, without placing the foot in the stirrup, on a charger in all its armour; _item_, leaped from the ground a-straddle on to the shoulders of a tall man on a large horse, seizing the man by the sleeve with one hand, without other assistance; _item_, placing one hand on the saddle-bow of a large charger, and the other near the ears, taking him by the mane, and from the level ground jumping to the other side (_côté_) of the charger.”