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.

[Illustration: Fig. 177.--Somersaults.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in
"Exercises in Leaping and Vaulting," by A. Tuccaro: 4to (Paris, 1599).]

Tennis also became the favourite game amongst the bourgeois in the towns,
and tennis-courts were built in all parts, of such spacious proportions
and so well adapted for spectators, that they were often converted into
theatres. Their game of billiards resembled the modern one only in name,
for it was played on a level piece of ground with wooden balls which were
struck with hooked sticks and mallets. It was in great repute in the
fourteenth century, for in 1396 Marshal de Boucicault, who was considered
one of the best players of his time, won at it six hundred francs (or more
than twenty-eight thousand francs of present currency). At the beginning
of the following century the Duke Louis d'Orleans ordered _billes et
billars_ to be bought for the sum of eleven sols six deniers tournois
(about fifteen francs of our money), that he might amuse himself with
them. There were several games of the same sort, which were not less
popular. Skittles; _la Soule_ or _Soulette_, which consisted of a large
ball of hay covered over with leather, the possession of which was
contested for by two opposing sides of players; Football; open Tennis;
Shuttlecock, &c. It was Charles V. who first thought of giving a more
serious and useful character to the games of the people, and who, in a
celebrated edict forbidding games of chance, encouraged the establishment
of companies of archers and bowmen. These companies, t