[Illustration: Fig. 176.--Fireworks on the Water, with an Imitation of a
Naval Combat.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Copper of the "Pyrotechnie"
of Hanzelet le Lorrain: 4to (Pont-a-Mousson, 1630).]
We have hitherto only described the sports engaged in for the amusement of
the spectators; we have still to describe those in which the actors took
greater pleasure than even the spectators themselves. These were specially
the games of strength and skill as well as dancing, with a notice of which
we shall conclude this chapter. There were, besides, the various games of
chance and the games of fun and humour. Most of the bourgeois and the
villagers played a variety of games of agility, many of which have
descended to our times, and are still to be found at our schools and
colleges. Wrestling, running races, the game of bars, high and wide
jumping, leap-frog, blind-man's buff, games of ball of all sorts,
gymnastics, and all exercises which strengthened the body or added to the
suppleness of the limbs, were long in use among the youth of the nobility
(Figs. 177 and 178). The Lord of Fleuranges, in his memoirs written at the
court of Francis I., recounts numerous exercises to which he devoted
himself during his childhood and youth, and which were then looked upon as
a necessary part of the education of chivalry. The nobles in this way
acquired a taste for physical exercises, and took naturally to combats,
tournaments, and hunting, and subsequently their services in the
battle-field gave them plenty of opportunities to gratify the taste thus
developed in them. These were not, however, sufficient for their
insatiable activity; when they could not do anything else, they played at
tennis and such games at all hours of the day; and these pastimes had so
much attraction for nobles of all ages that they not unfrequently
sacrificed their health in consequence of overtaxing their strength. In
1506 the King of Castile, Philippe le Beau, died of pleurisy, from a
severe cold which he caught while playing tennis.
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