Duelling Stories of the Sixteenth Century

One of the most singular contributions extant to the social history of the latter half of the sixteenth century. As a collection of sensational anecdotes of real life, it stands entirely by itself in continental literature. Brantôme, the French soldier, courtier, and memoirist, draws on his firsthand experience at the courts of Europe to chronicle the duelling culture of Renaissance France — a period when the diseased remains of chivalry were dying out in an atmosphere of treachery, violence, debauchery, and fanaticism, and France, torn by complex factions, was struggling through the dark and stormy phases of the Religious Civil Wars. Translated from the French by George Herbert Powell, 1904.