The use of the spur appears to date from the most ancient times. The origin of the word has been much disputed. From the time of Louis le Débonnaire it was called _spuors_, which has become _sporen_ in Germany, _sperane_ in Italian, _spur_ in English, _éperon_ in French. The Latins called it _calcar_ (which originally signified cock’s spur), doubtless from the form first given to the spur. That form has strangely varied during centuries. The oldest known shape is that of the spur found in the tomb of Queen Brunehaut, who died in 613, and which is simply like a skewer. This seems to have long continued to be the form; but, from the commencement of the thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the spur is seen in the form of a rose, or of a star with a turning rowel, and was mostly fashioned in a very rich and delicate manner. At the period when horses were clad in steel or leather, the spurs were necessarily very long, in order to reach the animal’s flanks (Figs. 75 and 76). The spurs of Godfrey of Bouillon, which have been preserved (their authenticity is more or less questionable), are in that style. In the reign of Charles VII. the young nobles wore, rather for show than for use, spurs the rowel of which was as large as the hand, and fixed at the end of a metal stem half a foot long. If, therefore, from time immemorial every mounted horse “felt the spur,” there was at least a period when every sort of spur could not be indiscriminately applied to the flanks of each individual of the equine race. “There are,” says Brunetto Latini, a writer of the thirteenth century, in his “Treasury of all Things”--a sort of encyclopædia of the age--“there are horses of several kinds: chargers, or tall horses, for the combat, whence the expression, ‘mounting the high horse;’ others, for gentle exercise, use palfreys, which were also called amblers and hackneys; others employ pack-horses, _courtants_ (cropped horses), to carry a load (_somme_).” _Somme_ here signifies a burden, and this, which we now call baggage, consisted of spare arms and hauberk, which a knight was careful to take with him when he went to the wars. Mares and _bât_-horses (horses carrying the _bât_, or load) were reserved for agriculture and other field-purposes; and it was clearly on that account that a knight was not allowed to ride them. To make a knight ride upon a mare was, like the loss of his spurs, one of the most degrading punishments that could be inflicted on him, and thenceforth “any one who regarded his own honour would no more have touched that disgraced knight than a shaven idiot (leper).” [Illustration: Fig. 75.--German Spur.] [Illustration: Fig. 76.--Italian Spur.] [Illustration: Fig. 77.--A Knight armed and mounted for War. (Museum of Artillery, Paris.)]