The Father of Chivalry

“Moses... was mighty in words and in deeds.”

A MAGNIFICENT land was the Egypt in the midst of which Moses grew up. With an atmosphere clear and dry, with a soil which no harvests could exhaust, with towns and temples at every bend of the river emerging from the midst of the great garden into which the surface had been carefully cultured, and with its bountiful Nile flowing on beneath the scented lotus, or spreading over the plain, with all the wealth of its far-travelled waters, nothing could be a more perfect symbol of prosperity and self-sufficing abundance, whilst a peculiar architecture imparted to it all an air of wonderful grandeur. That architecture was chiefly monuments and temples. The abodes of the living were sufficiently simple, but all the wealth and genius of the country were exerted to embody their ideas of immortality, and to do homage to the powers unseen. Already, in the days of Moses, the pyramid of Cheops had stood for nearly a thousand years — a mountain of masonry a furlong in length and breadth; and in temples which covered acres of land, and where colossal figures towered up a hundred feet in height, sculpture did its best to rescue kingly memories from the tooth of Time, and awaken in the spectator’s mind awful ideas of the immense and invisible, so that all the opulence and activity of the present were visibly linked to a remote and stupendous past, and through the sunny stir of the passing hour there fell constant and gigantic shadows from the surrounding “silent land.”

The people who then inhabited this country, — and since then three millenniums and a half have passed away, — were more refined and intelligent than any race of which we possess the memorials. But when we say this we speak of the privileged orders: for just as the soil was the property of the sovereign, so learning was the monopoly of the priests or professional caste, and in all likelihood the mass of the people were as poor and ignorant as they usually were under all the ancient despotisms. But by the arrangements of Providence Moses was brought up a member of the privileged class. Adopted by one of the royal family, his princess-mother obtained for him the best instructors. He would be taught to read the curious character to which Egyptian sages had consigned their speculations and their learning, and his own meditations he would be taught to consign to a scroll of papyrus. In that geometry which the land-surveying exigencies of their inundated land made so necessary, and in the cognate astronomy in which they were wonderful adepts, it is likely that he would be in due time initiated; and from the fact that he was afterwards able to reduce a golden image to dust, it has been surmised that he was no stranger to the processes of their practical chemistry, which had already presented them with glass and bronze and many pure and exquisite pigments. At the same time it is right to confess that a great deal of that Egyptian wisdom was the merest foolishness, and, if Moses ever mastered it, it would seem to have dropped from the memory of his more enlightened years, as baby gewgaws drop from the open hand of manhood; and of their historical myi:hology there is no more trace in the Book of Genesis than there is in the worship of Jehovah trace of their ridiculous idolatry. But Moses was not only a scholar; as years went on he had an opportunity of earning distinction as a warrior. According to Josephus, and we have no reason to doubt the correctness of his statement, the Ethiopians made an incursion into Egypt, and routed the army which was sent to resist them. Panic spread over the country, and Pharaoh trembled at the approach of the swarthy savages, who were already close to Memphis. The oracles were consulted; that is to say, advice was asked from the best-informed and most sagacious body of men in the capital, — the heads of the priesthood; and, well aware of his remarkable abilities, they advised that the command should be intrusted to INFoses. He immediately took the field, and by a rapid though round-about march surprised the enemy, defeated them with heavy slaughter, drove them back into their own territories, and followed them up so hard, capturing one city after another, that they found no asylum till they reached the swamp-girdled city of Meroe. Here Moses lay down with his army, and would have found the blockade both tedious and difficult had he not happened to gain the affections of an Ethiopian lady, whom he promised to marry provided she put them in the way to gain possession of the city. Her admiration of the handsome Hebrew was too strong for her patriotism, and the conqueror returned from his triumphant campaign, bringing with him his sable princess and the spoils of Meroe, and filling the minds of all his fellow-countrymen with hope and exultation.-^

The substantial truth of this statement there is no reason to doubt. It could be no invention of Josephus, and it is adopted by Irenaeus, a Christian father of the second century, and receives incidental

Josephus, Antiquities, book ii. chap. 10.

confirmation from the fact that Stephen speaks of Moses as” mighty in words and in deeds!’ — a man of brilliant achievements whilst still a resident at the Egyptian court, and it is still more confirmed by Moses himself, who casually mentions that his wife was a native of Ethiopia.^ With the capacity which Moses had by this time abundantly indicated, and with the position which he occupied so near the person of the sovereign, nothing could be more natural than to intrust him with the command of an important expedition; nor is the probability diminished by the hint which Josephus gives, that the counsellors who suggested it calculated on one if not both of two alternatives: they were bound to hope that Moses might rid Egypt of the invader; if not, they would not be sorry that the invaders should rid themselves of an unwelcome rival and the court of Pharaoh of a powerful and dangerous upstart.

In some respects the nearest modern counterpart to Moses was that great Prince of Orange known to history as William the Self-contained or Silent. Like Moses, the son of a pious mother, her lessons were not lost, but for a long time they continued latent. Like Moses, he soon left his home, and in early boyhood became a page to the great Emperor Charles the Fifth. The shrewd old Kaiser soon perceived the wonderful depth and quickness of the child, and by the time he was fifteen years of

1 Numb. xii. 1.

age, the page had become a sort of privy councillor — present at the most confidential interviews, and master of all the Emperor’s policy. Under the ablest tutor of the time, he learned a science far more arduous than Egyptian hieroglyphics, till he could read at a glance the hearts of princes, and from the lies of statesmen could enucleate their meaning and their motive; and under the greatest captain of the age he learned to be the cautious campaigner and the resourceful warrior; — such a favourite pupil that when the famous abdication took place it was on William’s shoulder that the feeble Emperor leaned his hand whilst addressing the States- General. Charles resigned — Charles, who with his exterminating edicts and remorseless executions had been a Pharaoh to the Protestants; Charles resigned, and was succeeded by a Pharaoh of narrower intellect and harder heart — Philip the Second. But all this while William was the gay and hilarious courtier, captivating every acquaintance by his exquisite address, and charming wide circles by the bright overflow of spirits on which no burden pressed. When one day hunting with the King of Prance in the forest of Vincennes, as the two rode along together, Henry told William of a secret league into which Henry of Prance had entered with Philip of Spain to extinguish Protestantism throughout Europe, by extirpating every Protestant. Too good a

28 THE FATHER OF CHR^LRY.

diplomatist to gasp or change colour at the astounding disclosure, William rode on and finished the hunt; but took the first opportunity to gallop off with his terrible secret. The doom that hung over his fellow-subjects in Holland roused all his patriotism, and by and bye the lessons of his pious mother revived in his emancipation from Popery; and turning to account the lessons of soldiership and diplomacy which he had learned from his grim old tutor, in the hand of God he became the instrument to shatter the Romish league, to stultify the Pope, to roll back the hosts of Philip, to break the yoke of Spain, and lead forth to freedom the Seven United Provinces, — the Moses of a modern Exodus. So we can quite conceive that it was his very success which precipitated the decision of the son of Amram and expedited his flight from the halls of Pharaoh. With his acknowledged ability, with his influential position, and still more with his military renown, it would have been natural for his compatriots to look up to him as their guardian and protector; and “he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them.”^ But if “his brethren” understood not, the more perspicacious Egyptians would form their own conclusion, and the unscrupulous Pharaoh would have his fears. As the Jewish antiquarian tells us, “After being saved from the Ethiopians by Moses, the Egyptians began to hate him, and feared that he might stir up sedition and effect a revolution in the land; and, instigated by the sacred scribes, the king at last sought to slay him.” The fear was not preposterous. These Hebrews had a mysterious aptitude for rising; and as a slave of this nation had once risen to be viceroy, who could tell but this fortunate foundling might aspire a step higher, and seek to be king? He had already commanded an army, and were there not scattered through the land half a million of his brethren ready to rise at his summons?

In any case his growing importance made decision more urgent, and if he was to continue at court, if he was to insure his own safety, there was now no option: he must conform to the established religion, he must bow to the idols, he must become out and out an Egyptian. It was a solemn alternative. On the one side, Egypt with its treasures, the prospect of rising to the highest rank in a nation the most renowned and the proudest of the earth, the society of sages, the splendours of a palace, the glories of a princely equipage passing through the admiring populace amidst shouts of “Bow the knee!” and, on the other, Goshen, with its slaves, the fellowship of thralls, with all generosity and spirit, all taste and intelligence crushed out of them, with bread of tears in lieu of royal dainties, and instead of floating down the Nile in

30 THE FATHER OF CHIVALFcY.

a golden barge amidst the strains of voluptuous music, scorching in the brick-field amidst the groans of companions in captivity. But these bondmen were his brethren; their God, and not Osiris, was the true God; and afflicted and depressed as they presently were, their God had promised to deliver them; and who could tell but He mioht honour Moses himself to be their deliverer?

So farewell Memphis; farewell kind foster-mother; farewell gloomy and fitful Pharaoh; farewell, ye dreams of ambition; ye prospects of greatness and pleasures of sin, farewell!

A noble decision! Affliction with the people of God he preferred to the pleasures of sin, and reproach as one of Messiah’s people he deemed greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. And the sequel proves him right. The day that he renounced his earthly prospects God served him heir to an inheritance incorruptible and which fadeth not away; and for ages past his solitary name has outshone all the monarchs combined of the one-and-thirty dynasties.

On his benevolent errand he reached the headquarters of his countrymen. He examined into their circumstances, and found their position abundantly degraded and distressing. No doubt he did what he could to comfort them, and if he had brought away aught of his wonted wealth from the capital, we may be sure that words would not be bis only consolation; but as he “looked on their burdens” his generous spirit boiled with indignation, and he could ill repress the inward rage awakened as coarse ruffians jeered and buffeted his brethren, and, like “dumb, driven cattle,” forced to their tasks with heavy blows steps weak with age or staggering with infirmity. At last he came up one day as one of these sturdy tyrants was striking a Hebrew, possibly a kinsman of his own.^ With a quick glance he satisfied himself that there were no witnesses in sight, and, Hebrew as he was, he stepped forth his brother s champion. To Moses the man “mighty in deeds,” it was a small affair to fell the caitiff, and a few moments sufficed to obliterate all trace by hiding the body in the sand. But oppression demoralizes its victims. In taking his own high spirit as the rule, Moses miscalculated the mettle of his countrymen. Not only was there no readiness to rise against their taskmasters, but there was no honourable feeling amongst themselves. The man whom his ready stroke had rescued from blows and bruises, and perhaps from death, had compromised his benefactor’s life by noising abroad the matter; and when on a subsequent occasion he sought to separate two Hebrew combatants, he was met with the rough retort,” Who made thee a prince and a judge over

1 Ex. ii. 11 — “One of his brethren.”

32 THE FATHER OF CHIVALllY.

US? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?” And soon finding that the affair had reached the ears and roused the wrath of Pharaoh, nothing remained to Moses but to seek safety in flight.

For his subsequent asylum Moses was indebted to Eastern hospitality and his own chivalry. Of that hospitality the traces still continue in these unchanging regions. A French traveller (M. Poujoulat) who had made himself at home in the desert, tells us how he one day rode up to the tent of a sheikh near Hebron. “I am tired with my journey, and when I saw your tents I blessed God.” “You are welcome,” replied the sheikh; “a guest is a favour from Heaven; rest you in safety.” And finding, on longer acquaintance, what an enthusiast for Arab life was his visitor, how he preferred the tents of Kedar to the palaces of Prance, the old Bedouin would not allow him to go away; and it was only on the third morning that he could extricate himself from the affectionate embrace of the Arab, who asked him, with tears in his eyes, “Why leave me? My tent and my flock shall be yours, and if you wish to have a wife, there is my daughter,”

In some such fashion was Moses invited into the tent of the priest or chieftain of Midian, only that he had rendered a service which well entitled him

1 “Corresp. d’Orient,” quoted in Migue’s Dictionnaire de la Bible.

to a distinguished reception. He had now fairly escaped from Egypt, and had nothing to fear from Pharaoh, but he was a houseless wanderer —

“The world was all before hira, where to choose His place of rest, and Providence his guide.”

That Providence conducted him to a silent and lonely region beyond the nearer branch of the Eed Sea — a district extremely desolate and solemn — lofty mountains raising their sharp ribs and bald summits far into the sky; and where, if his bag of dates and water-sack were not spent, the pilgrim might pass many days without ever encountering the “human face divine;” seldom a living creature to be seen except the- lizard looking timidly from under the stone, or a coney as timid venturing forth for a furtive nibble in the cool of the day; seldom a sound to be heard, except the rare murmur of the bee among the acacia blooms, or the tinkle of the sand as it slid tunefully down the slopes of the granite — the desert’s musical hour-glass — an oratory vast and tranquil and unprofaned, and with its absence of idols pleasant contrast to Egypt — where, for the next forty years, Moses was destined to spend many a day of exalted communion with Abraham’s God and his own; and where, before the history ended, he should see the mountains shake, and hear those hushed valleys re-echo to the trumpet of angels and the voice of Jehovah.

One day lie had readied a little oasis. There was pasture in the district, and if there were people they would be sure to come to the well. As Moses sat waiting, the first who arrived were seven sisters, who proceeded to draw water from the well and pour it into a trough, that the sheep might get their daily drink; but they had no sooner filled the trough than a set of rude fellows came up and drove forward their flock to appropriate the precious supply. With his native gallantry and his high-spirited resistance to wrong, Moses felt outraged, and whether it was awe for the magnificent man, or respect for his Egyptian uniform, the churls fell back and conceded to the terrible stranger what they would not have yielded to manly feeling, or even the more commonplace regard for fair play: a characteristic action which introduced its gallant author to Eaguel or Jethro, and which was rewarded with a home in a good man’s house, and in the midst of a family where the true God was feared and worshipped.

We hereafter read that “the man Moses was exceeding meek.” At first sight the actions which we have now been observing seem hardly consistent with such a character, and, like that son of thunder and summoner of fire from heaven who softened down into the beloved and loving apostle, we might be apt to suppose that, in the case of Moses, the hot spirit of the youthful soldier had mellowed down at last into the meekness of the law-giver. ‘Tis possible; yet we are loath to concede that the ingredients are incompatible: courage on the one side, with instant and energetic resistance to the wrong inflicted on others; and on the other side patience, gentleness, and much endurance. As the great Lord Erskine said, “I never knew a man remarkable for heroic bearing whose very aspect was not lighted up by gentleness and humanity; nor a kill- and- eat-Tiim countenance that did not cover the heart of a bully or poltroon.” And so to our conception the man Moses with the meekness or magnanimity which could bear any amount of personal abuse and obloquy, but with blood ready to rush up in the cause of the oppressed and feeble, in the quarrel of weak women or down-trampled slaves, counting no odds and fearing no consequence, stands forth the highest type of heroism, the presage of what in later times came to be known as Christian chivalry.

And, my friends, a chivalry truly Christian is one of the noblest forms which goodness can assume; and although what commonly goes by the name was soon caricatured and perished, in its origin it was a noble effort. On the trunk of old Teutonism it was an effort to engraft the Christian graces; those rugged blood-splashed warriors from Scandinavian fiords and German forests, so fierce and cruel that when Ultilas translated the Bible into Gothic he left out the wars of the Israelites for fear of worse inflaming their thirst of slaughter — it was an effort to soften into manliness those bulls of Bashan, an effort to take up and turn into right channels, and thus to sanctify, the martial instinct, so deep in hot redundant natures. So after watching his arms in a church all night — after musing and praying over the high career before him — on the morrow when the knight was to receive his spurs he placed his hands between the hands of the sovereign, and swore “to speak the truth, to succour the helpless and oppressed, and never to turn back from an enemy” — or, as it was sometimes expanded,

“To teach the heathen and uphold the Christ; To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her.”^

And although, as we have said, human depravity proved too strong for knightly vows — although by and bye some orders had to be broken up for their intolerable crimes, and the system itself became a fair subject for ridicule — in its outset the institution went far to humanize Europe and redeem its

1 Tennyson’s Idylls.

most dismal era. And in order to understand what was the ideal, what was expected from the wearer of the hard- won badge, we have only to read the descriptions in our older minstrelsy. For example, take Chaucer: —

“A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the time that he firste began
To riden out, he loved chevalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curtesie.
And of his port, as meke as is a mayde,
He never yet no vilanie ne sayde
In alle his lif, until no manere wight,
He was a veray parfit gentil knight.”

And of a type still higher the hero of the first book of the Faery Queen: —

“A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine, Yclad in mightie armes and silver shielde.... And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead, as living, ever him adored: Upon his shield the like was also scored, For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had. Right, faithfull, true he was in deed and word; But of his cheere did seeme too solemn sad; Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.”

It is true that in as far as the defence of the weak, generosity, truth, and a lofty standard of personal purity constituted chivalry, there was nothing in that institution which was not already in Christianity; but it was of some consequence in those regardless times to have even a limited number of virtues canonized and surrounded by the highest sanctions. And the fruits were fair. It was from a true feeling of chivahy that, when his favourite son broke his parole and escaped from the Tower of London, John of France took the place of the runaway hostage and died a prisoner in England. It was from the same feeling that when Edward the Third was about to put to death the citizens of Calais, the angry monarch who had resisted other intercession felt constrained to grant the demand of his good Queen Philippa. “Dame, I wish you had been somcAvhere else; but I cannot refuse you. I put them at your disposal.” It was the same feeling which, on the eve of the battle of Ivry, induced Henry of Navarre to go up to Colonel Schomberg and apologize for some hasty word, “in case I don’t survive,” and which led the gallant German to stammer forth, “Ah, sire! you kill me with your words; for now there is nothing for me but to die in your defence,” as next day he did, in rescue of the king, and before his eyes. And the same knightly sentiment it was — not the less noble for being Christian — which on the field of Zutphen, when the flask of water was held to the lips of the dying Sydney, and he noticed the wistful look of the bleeding soldier near him, pushed it away with the words, “Give it to that man, his need is greater than mine.”.

Such things are no doubt older than mediaeval chivalry, — some of them, we think, as old as Moses, and all of them as old as that Divine model from whose inspiring example, through channels sufficiently tortuous and turbid, they originally came. But something is due to the system which in days dark and savage caught up a few of those graces which once encircled the brow of Absolute Goodness, and entwining them together taught rough warriors to contend for the chaplet of knightly renown. And right sorry should we be if in standing up for the absent or feeble, if in forgiving the fallen, if in fulfilling his promise, if in commanding his passions, the soldier of Jesus Christ did not show that piety is the supreme of nobleness, and that the Christian is the flower of chivahy.

For example: Championship is chivalrous. Scenes like what Moses witnessed are of frequent occurrence; but when the bludgeoned Egyptian smites the unarmed Hebrew, when great hulking clowns water their flocks at troughs which feeble women have filled, there is not always a Moses at hand to punish the miscreants and redress the wrong. On such occasions be the Moses yourself: stand up for the weak and the weaponless. Your absent acquaintance is disparaged, or a man of worth who is no acquaintance at all — by your silent displeasure or outspoken defence let it be seen that in you the absent have a constant advocate. In the public vehicle some solitary traveller, poor sempstress or servant-girl, is annoyed by the rude gaze or ruder remarks of some low-minded passenger, change places with her, or reprove the ruffian outright; and you need not be afraid, these coarse fellows are so cowardly. Or some unfortunate neighbour cannot get his rights, by that most terrible tyrant, English Law, confused, contradictory, uncodified, with all its torture-chambers — Courts of Exchequer, Courts of Queen’s Bench, Courts of Chancery: by its tremendous intimidation in the hands of unprincipled rapacity the rights of the widow and the fatherless are withheld: — if with the help of any good angel in a long black robe you could overturn the throne of iniquity and recover the spoils of injustice; or, better still, if you could explode the whole system of legal oppression, Hercules with his hydra, George with his dragon, would be champions less worthy than you; England would thank for ever the great legal reformer who smote its Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

Or say, Generosity. When after the great fight of Crecy the prince bestowed 500 merks a year on Lord Audley, it was deemed a noble deed when he at once divided them among the four valiant friends to whom he felt that his success was owing. And so, few things should be better understood in this our day than pure and disinterested conduct in regard to money. Like Moses coming away from the treasures of Egypt, show plainly that you have elsewhere a better and enduring substance. Show plainly that if there are occasions on which you do not grudge to give wealth away, there are ways in which you disdain to make it.

Having mentioned as an attribute of Christian nobleness forbearance to the fallen — and it comes from the original code of honour, the statute-book of that Grand-Master who said, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him,” — I shall end with an instance taken from no book of heraldry, but from the humble annals of a Scottish minister. The Spanish Armada created great consternation in Scotland; but one morning James Melville awoke to find one of the magistrates of Anstruther at his bedside with the news that a shipful of Spaniards was in the harbour in great distress, and the captain ashore. “Up I got with diligence, and there presents us a very reverend man, of big stature, grey-haired, and very humble-like, who, after meikle courtesy, bowing close with his face near the ground, and touching my shoe with his hand, began his harangue in the Spanish tongue.” Of that the purport was the wreck of the Armada and the straits to which they themselves were driven. “I answered that howbeit neither our friendship (which could not be great, seeing their king and they were friends to Christ’s greatest enemy, the Pope of Rome), nor yet their cause, against our neighbours and special friends of England, could procure any benefit at our hands, nevertheless they should know that we were men, moved by human compassion, and Christians of better religion nor they. For whereas our people resorting amongst them on peaceable and lawful affairs of merchandise, were taken and cast into prison, their goods and gear confiscated, and their bodies committed to the cruel flaming fire for the cause of religion, they should find amongst us nothing but Christian pity and works of mercy.” Accordingly the laird of Anstruther received Don Gomez and the other officers into his house, and entertained them generously, whilst the crew and soldiers, to the number of 260, were regaled during their stay with such food as the place could supply. It is pleasant to know, what Melville adds, “This Don Gomez showed great kindness to a ship of our town which he found arrested at Cadiz at his home-coming, rode to court for her, made great praise of Scotland to his king, took the honest men to his house, inquired for the laird of Anstruther, for the minister, and his host, and sent home many commendations.”^

1 James Melville’s Diary, 260-264.