The principles and feelings of chivalry were firmly established in England in the reign of Henry I., and gave the tone and character to our foreign military warfare. This state of things is proved in an interesting manner by a circumstance that occurred during the war of Henry with Louis the French king. The reader remembers that the latter had espoused the cause of William the son of Robert, Henry's elder brother, who was kept by his uncle from his rightful inheritance of Normandy. The chivalric anecdote is this: The two armies were approaching each other near Audelay, when, instead of rushing to the conflict with their whole masses, five hundred knights on the English side and four hundred on the French prepared for an encounter, a joust to the utterance. About eighty Normans, friends of the French king, charged the centre of Henry's line with true chivalric fire. The English monarch was severely wounded in the head, but the Normans could not pierce the firm line of the English, and they were all taken prisoners. The three hundred remaining knights of Louis made a fine attempt to redeem their companions in arms. Again the English line was impenetrable, and the recoil of the shock scattered the French. Henry's soldiers now were assailants; and so fiercely did they press their advantage, that even the French king scarcely escaped with life.[386] [Sidenote: Effect of chivalry in Stephen's reign.] The knightly character had an important effect on England during the troublous reign of Stephen. As he was deserted by his barons, he called in foreign cavaliers to assist him in his resistance to the Empress Maud. Their valour was rewarded by the grant of estates; and thus a new order of nobility arose to shake the arrogance of the old; and new opinions, feelings, and manners, became blended with English habits. [Sidenote: Troubadours and romance writers,--reign of Henry II.] [Sidenote: Chivalric manners of the time.]