These wild beasts were sometimes employed in the combats, and were pitted against bulls and dogs in the presence of the King and his court.  It was after one of these combats that Charles IX., excited by the sanguinary spectacle, wished to enter the arena alone in order to attack a lion which had torn some of his best dogs to pieces, and it was only with great difficulty that the audacious sovereign was dissuaded from his foolish purpose.  Henry III. had no disposition to imitate his brother’s example; for dreaming one night that his lions were 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 so well earned.