re devouring him, he had them all
killed the next day.

The love for hunting wild animals, such as the wolf, bear, and boar (see
chapter on Hunting), from an early date took the place of the animal
combats as far as the court and the nobles were concerned. The people were
therefore deprived of the spectacle of the combats which had had so much
charm for them; and as they could not resort to the alternative of the
chase, they treated themselves to a feeble imitation of the games of the
circus in such amusements as setting dogs to worry old horses or donkeys,
&c. (Fig. 166). Bull-fights, nevertheless, continued in the southern
provinces of France, as also in Spain.

At village feasts not only did wrestling matches take place, but also
queer kinds of combats with sticks or birch boughs. Two men, blindfolded,
each armed with a stick, and holding in his hand a rope fastened to a
stake, entered the arena, and went round and round trying to strike at a
fat goose or a pig which was also let loose with them. It can easily be
imagined that the greater number of the blows fell like hail on one or
other of the principal actors in this blind combat, amidst shouts of
laughter from the spectators.

[Illustration: Fig. 166.--Fight between a Horse and Dogs.--Fac-simile of a
Manuscript in the British Museum (Thirteenth Century).]

Nothing amused our ancestors more than these blind encounters; even kings
took part at these burlesque representations. At Mid-Lent annually they
attended with their court at the Quinze-Vingts, in Paris, in order to see
blindfold persons, armed from head to foot, fighting with a lance or
stick. This amusement was quite sufficient to attract all Paris. In 1425,
on the last day of August, the inhabitants of the capital crowded their
windows to witness the procession of four blind men, clothed in full
armour, like knights going to a tournament, and preceded by two men, one
playing the hautbois and the other bearing a banner on which a pig was
painted. These four champions on the next day attacked a pig, which was to
become the property of the one who killed it. The lists were situated in
the court of the Hotel d'Armagnac, the present site of the Palais Royal. A
great crowd attended the encounter. The blind men, armed with all sorts of
weapons, belaboured each other so furiously that the game would have ended
fatally to one or more of them had they not been separated and made to
divide the pig which they had all