A simple instance will suffice to show the high degree of irritability which distinguishes the Middle Ages from our own time. One can hardly imagine a more peaceful game than that of chess. Still like the chansons de gestes of some centuries back, Olivier de la Marche mentions frequent quarrels arising over it: “le plus saige y pert patience.”
A scientific historian of the Middle Ages, relying first and foremost on official documents, which rarely refer to the passions, except violence and cupidity, occasionally runs the risk of neglecting the difference of tone between the life of the expiring Middle Ages and that of our own days. Such documents would sometimes make us forget the vehement pathos of medieval life, of which the chroniclers, however defective as to material facts, always keep us in mind.
In more than one respect life had still the colours of a fairy- story; that is to say, it assumed those colours in the eyes of contemporaries. The court chroniclers were men of culture, and they observed the princes, whose deeds they recorded, at close quarters, yet even they give these records a somewhat archaic, hieratic air. The following story, told by Chastellain, serves to prove this. The young count of Charolais, the later Charles the Bold, on arriving at Gorcum, in Holland, on his way from Sluys, learns that his father, the duke, has taken all his pensions and benefices from him. Thereupon he calls his whole court into his presence, down to the scullions, and in a touching speech imparts his misfortune to them, dwelling on his respect for his ill-informed father, and on his anxiety about the welfare of all his retinue. Let those who have the means to live, remain with him awaiting the return of good fortune; let the poor go away freely, and let them come back when they hear that the count’s fortune has been re-established: they will all return to their old places, and the count will reward them for their patience. “Then were heard cries and sobs, and with one accord they shouted: ‘We all, we all, my lord, will live and die with thee.’” Profoundly touched, Charles accepts their devotion: “Well, then, stay and suffer, and I will suffer for you, rather than that you should be in want.” The nobles then come and offer him what they possess, “one saying, I have thousand, another, ten thousand; I have this,
