It appears, however, that, notwithstanding this reckless spirit of duelling that prevailed in France, Lord Herbert had found some difficulty in bringing various noblemen to the field; and the following account gives a fair picture of the times.
“It happened one day that a daughter of the Duchess de Ventadour, of about ten or eleven years of age, going one evening from the castle to walk in the meadows, myself, with divers French gentlemen, attended her and some gentlewomen that were with her. This young lady wearing a knot of riband on her head, a French cavalier took it suddenly and fastened it to his hatband: the young lady, offended, herewith demands her riband; but he refusing to restore it, the young lady, addressing herself to me, said, ‘Monsieur, I pray, get my riband from that gentleman.’ Hereupon, going towards him, I courteously, with my hat in my hand, desired him to do me the honour that I might deliver the lady her riband or bouquet again; but he roughly answering me, ‘Do you think I will give it to you, when I have refused it to her?’ I replied, ‘Nay, then, sir, I will make you restore it by force!’ Whereupon, also, putting on my hat, and reaching at his, he to save himself ran away; and after a long course in the meadow, finding that I had almost overtook him, he turned short, and, running to the young lady, was about to put the riband in her hand, when I, seizing upon his arm, said to the young lady, ‘It was I that gave it.’ ‘Pardon me,’ quoth she, ‘it is he that gives it me.’ I said then, ‘Madam, I will not contradict you; but, if he dare say that I did not constrain him to give it, I will fight with him.’ The French gentleman answered nothing thereunto for the present, and we conducted the lady again to the castle. The next day I desired Mr. Aurelian Townshend to tell the French cavalier that he must confess that I constrained him to restore the riband, or fight with me. But the gentleman, seeing him unwilling to accept of this challenge, went out from the place; whereupon, I following him, some of the gentlemen that belonged to the Constable, taking notice hereof, acquainted him therewith, who, sending for the French cavalier, checked him well for his sauciness in taking the riband away from his grandchild, and afterwards bid him depart his house: and this was all I ever heard of the gentleman, with whom I proceeded in that manner, because I thought myself obliged thereunto by the oath taken when I was made Knight of the Bath.”
It seems that our hero was a very pugnacious defender of ladies’ top-knots and ribands, for he relates another quarrel of a similar nature, in the case of a Scotch gentleman, “who, taking a riband in the like manner from Mrs. Middleton, a maid of honour, in a back-room behind Queen Anne’s lodging in Greenwich, she likewise desired me to get her the said riband. I repaired, as formerly, to him in a courteous manner to demand it; but he refusing, as the French cavalier did, I caught him by the neck, and had almost thrown him down, when company came in and parted us. I offered, likewise, to fight with this gentleman, and came to the place appointed, by Hyde Park; but this also was interrupted, by order of the Lords of the Council, and I never heard more of it.”
His lordship, notwithstanding his constant quarrels, which he most decidedly sought for, by his own account, asserts “that, although I lived in the armies and courts of the greatest princes in Christendom, yet I never had a quarrel with man for mine own sake; so that, although in mine own nature I was ever choleric and hasty, yet I never, without occasion given, quarrelled with anybody: for my friends often have I hazarded myself, but never yet drew my sword for my own sake singly.”
It is difficult to reconcile this assertion with a quarrel he picked with the same Balaguy, so much renowned amongst the ladies, of whom he had already spoken. “I remembered myself,” he says, “of the bravado of M. Balaguy, and, coming to him, told him that I knew how brave a man he was, and that, as he had put me to one trial of daring when I was last with him in the trenches, I would put him to another; and saying that I had heard he had a fair mistress, and that the scarf he wore was her gift, I would maintain I had a worthier mistress than he, and that I would do as much for her sake as he, or any one else, durst do for his.”
Balaguy very wisely declined the meeting, with a joke of somewhat an indelicate nature: to which Lord Herbert replied, “that he spoke more like a paillard than a cavalier!” And here, strange to say, the matter ended. To doubt the courage of Balaguy, is out of the question; and it is but reasonable to infer that Lord Herbert was looked upon in the court of France as a crackbrained knight-errant. In the case of the young lady’s top-knot, there is little doubt but that the French cavalier was her favourite, whom in a pettish moment she sought to embroil with our hero; and the Frenchman very wisely considered the whole business a childish joke.
The Quixotic character of Lord Herbert was fully illustrated after the siege of Rees, when a trumpeter came from the Spanish army with a challenge from a Spanish cavalier, purporting, that if any cavalier would fight a single combat for the sake of his mistress, the said Spaniard would meet him upon the assurance of a field. His lordship was the only madman found to accept the defiance; and on this occasion received from the Prince of Orange a very salutary piece of advice. “His Excellency thereupon,” he says, “looking earnestly upon me, told me he was an old soldier, and that he had observed two sorts of men who used to send challenges of this kind: one of them, who, having lost perchance some part of their honour in the field before the enemy, would recover it again by a single fight; the other was of those who sent it only to discover whether our army had in it men affected to give trial of themselves in this kind. Howbeit, if this man was a person without exception to be taken against him, he said, there was none he knew upon whom he would sooner venture the honour of his army than myself. Hereupon, by his Excellency’s permission, I sent a trumpet to the Spanish army, when another trumpet came to me from Spinola, saying, the challenge was made without his consent, and that therefore he would not permit it.” This did not satisfy our knight; but he forthwith repaired to the Spanish camp to seek out the challenger. There he was received with great cordiality by Spinola; and, instead of a battle, the visit ended in a festive dinner, during which a conversation took place between his lordship and the Spanish general, descriptive of the times. “Di che moriva Signor Francesco Vere?” To which Lord Herbert replied, “Per aver niente a fare.” When Spinola observed, “E basta per un generale.” Lord Herbert adds, “Indeed, that brave commander, Sir Francis Vere, died, not in time of war, but in peace.” He then parted from his noble host, with a particular request to be allowed to fight the infidels if ever he undertook a crusade, when he would be the first man who died in the quarrel.
It appears, however, that on one occasion a Frenchman, the favourite Luynes, showed less of spirit than our countryman. Through some misrepresentations Lord Herbert was recalled, and Luynes procured his brother the Duke of Chaun, with a train of officers, “each of whom had killed his man,” to go to England as ambassador extraordinary to complain of the conduct of Lord Herbert. The inquiry terminated in his favour, when he fell upon his knees before King James, in presence of the Duke of Buckingham, to request that a trumpeter, if not a herald, might be sent to Luynes to tell him that he had made a false relation of the whole affair, and that he demanded satisfaction sword in hand. The King answered, “that he would take it into consideration.” But Luynes soon after died, and Herbert was again sent to France.
It may be easily imagined that Richelieu would not allow these edicts, apparently humane, to put an end to a practice which was both directly and indirectly of material service to his lofty ambition; and when he could not bring to the scaffold illustrious victims, such as the Cinque-Mars, De Thous, and Montmorency, he sought for guilt, real or supposed, amongst those nobles