Jean Froissart: Enemy

“It should be repeated that the English and Scots, when they meet in battle, fight hard and show great staying-power. They do not spare themselves, but go on to the limits of endurance. They are not like the Germans, who make one attack and then, if they see that they cannot break into the enemy and beat him, all turn back in a body.”

Jean Froissart

Et scahiez que Anglois et Escoçoiz, quant ilz se treuvent en bataille ensamble, sont dures gens et de longue alainne, et point ne s'esparngnent, mais s'entendent de eulx mettre à oultranche, comment qu'il prende. Ilz ne ressamblent pas les Alemans qui font une empainte, et, quant ilz voient qu'ilz ne puellent rompre ne entrer en leurs ennemis, ilz s'en retournent tout à ung fais.
Book 3, p. 345.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Fight

“His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble canon, with what true chivalrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall, such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady-love! – Ah, benedicite! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favour, or on the other. But, truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvellous little sympathy.”

Jean Froissart

Claverhouse, in Walter Scott's Old Mortality (1816), ch. 35.
Criticism

Love , Death , Faith , Religion

“His chapters inspire me with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself. And the noble canon, with what true chivalrous feeling he confines his beautiful expressions of sorrow to the death of the gallant and high-bred knight, of whom it was a pity to see the fall, such was his loyalty to his king, pure faith to his religion, hardihood towards his enemy, and fidelity to his lady-love!”

Jean Froissart

Ah, benedicite! how he will mourn over the fall of such a pearl of knighthood, be it on the side he happens to favour, or on the other. But, truly, for sweeping from the face of the earth some few hundreds of villain churls, who are born but to plough it, the high-born and inquisitive historian has marvellous little sympathy.
Claverhouse, in Walter Scott's Old Mortality (1816), ch. 35.
Criticism

Faith , Religion , Making love , Beauty