The fashion of keeping Court and household fools, writes Voltaire in his Age de Louis XIV., was for a time the grande mode of all the Courts of Europe. Some sovereigns, however, discarded the practice, and when Charles Louis, Electoral Prince of the Rhine, was asked why he did not keep a Court fool, he replied: “Well, it is easily accounted for. When I am inclined to laugh, I send for a couple of professors from college, set them an argument, and laugh at their folly.”
The Emperor Henry III., surnamed the Black, despised the Court fool—“a licensed scoundrel,” he said, “who obtained for his nonsense rewards that had never properly been showered on the benefactors of mankind.” And Christian I. of Denmark once remarked, that if he were in want of Court fools he had only to give license to his courtiers, who were capable of exhibiting themselves as the greatest fools in Europe. Frederick Barbarossa hated Court fools; and in France, Philip Augustus and Charles VII. had no sympathy for mirth-makers of this description.
On the other hand, few sovereigns extended greater favour to their fools than Maximilian I.;{314} and yet, as it has been remarked, “he found as much peril as profit in his intercourse with them.” On one occasion, when he was loading a fowling-piece, his house fool coming into his presence with a lighted candle was about to place it on an open cask of powder; and at another time his Majesty was playing at snowballs with his fool, when the latter threw one so violently at his right eye, that the imperial sight was damaged for a month. His principal fool or jester was Konrad, popularly styled “The Soldier and Wit of Maximilian,” for, on more than one occasion, he proved himself wiser in his generation than some of the political advisers who counselled their imperial master. Sometimes, however, Konrad’s jokes were of so astounding a nature that he would scarcely have dared to make them on his own responsibility. Such an instance occurred at a banquet given in honour of the Venetian ambassadors, and their Government, who had presented to the Emperor a costly goblet of the purest crystal; when Konrad, in the midst of the revelry and mirth, contrived to hook his spur in the tablecloth, and dancing off to pull with him everything on the table, the crystal goblet lying in fragments on the ground.
The ambassadors demanded the immediate punishment of Konrad, but Maximilian refused to gratify them, for he remarked, “the thing was only of glass, and that glass is very fragile. Had it been of gold, it would not have broken; and, even if it had, its fragments at least would have been valuable.” A somewhat similar story is told of the{315} French wit Brusquet, at a banquet given in the house of the Duke of Alva, when the Cardinal of Lorraine had negotiated the peace of Cateau-Cambresis with Philip II. of Spain. Brusquet at the close of the dessert jumped on the table, and, laying himself flat, rolled himself up in the cloth with plates, spoons, &c., and fell off at the other end of the table. Philip II. took the matter in good part, and laughed immoderately, ordering that Brusquet should be allowed to leave the room with what he had carried off under the cloth. Although oftentimes Konrad was open to reproach for his extraordinary conduct, there can be no doubt he loved his imperial master, and in emergency Maximilian had no truer friend.
One of the many fools of his successor, Charles V., was a Pole, Corneille de Lithuanie, who distinguished himself at a tournament held in Brussels in 1545, by carrying off the second prize for general gallantry. Another of his Court fools was Pedro de San Erbas; and it is related that, after Charles had abdicated, he held a Court at Valladolid to receive the farewell compliments of the nobles and ladies of the vicinity. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Pedro drew near to take leave of his old patron, whereupon Charles raised his hat, at which Pedro asked if the act was one of courtesy, or as an indication that he was no longer Emperor.
“Neither, Pedro,” answered Charles; “I do it to signify that all I can give you now is this simple token of civility.”
An amusing story is told of Nelle, the fool{316} attached to the Court of Matthias, who not only attended the celebrated meeting of the States, held at Ratisbon, but he had the effrontery to present to the Emperor an exquisitely bound volume, containing, as he said, a record of all that had been accomplished by the statesmen. On opening the book Matthias found it all blank paper, and exclaimed, “Why, there is nothing hidden here.”
“Exactly,” replied Nelle, “because there was nothing done there, and so my record is truthful.”
Another humorous anecdote relates how one day, at the Court of Ferdinand II., a silly courtier fancied he could amuse those present by his frivolities, which prompted Jonas, Ferdinand’s favourite fool, to answer him according to his folly. But this so enraged the courtier that he shouted, “Fellow, be silent; I never stoop to talk with a fool.”
“Well, I do,” retorted Jonas, “and therefore be good enough to listen to me in your turn.”
Maximilian, son of Frederick III., was taken prisoner when a revolt broke out at Bruges. His jester formed a scheme for his liberation; he provided horses for flight, and a rope-ladder by which he might descend from the window of his prison. Then the jester plunged into the canal which encircled the castle to swim across. But the town kept swans in the moat, and when these swans saw the man swimming, they rushed at him with their great flapping wings and beaks, and so beat, pinched, and frightened the poor fellow, that he made the best of his retreat.{317}
The smaller German Courts, says Dr. Doran,[131] followed the fashion set by the emperors, and Lips was so great a favourite that he actually sat in the council-chamber when the Margrave Philip was presiding. As may be gathered, however, from the following incident, the position of a fool was not always an enviable one. Thus when the Duke Ludwig of Bavaria was murdered on the bridge over the Danube at Kehlheim in 1231, the perpetrators of the crime laid it on the Duke’s fool, Stich, who was charged with having stabbed his patron with a bread-knife, because he had exasperated him by his bad jokes. “Ah,” said the unfortunate man, as he stood at the gallows, “that some one ought to be hanged for murdering the Duke I can very well comprehend, but that that some one should be me I do not comprehend at all.”
It would seem that as late as the sixteenth century the fool could be bought and sold, for when Louis II. of Hungary visited Erlau in 1520, he found that the governor possessed one of the best-trained hawks and one of the merriest fools that he had ever seen, both of which he obtained for between three and four thousand pounds. Another famous fool was Jenni von Stocken, who was attached to the household of Leopold the Pious. And of Killian, the fool of Albert of Austria, it is said that, when he was asked why, being so wise, he should play the fool, he replied, “The more thoroughly I play the fool, the wiser do men{318} account me, and there is my son, who thinks himself wise, and whom everybody knows to be a fool.”
But, as it has been often remarked, although the fool was mostly in request for his tricks and his waggery, he was frequently employed as a political adviser; and when the Elector Frederick was threatened with invasion, he consulted his fool Klaus as to whether he should treat with the enemy, who said to him, “Give me your best mantle, and I will tell you.” Whereupon Klaus tore the mantle in two, and presented himself before his master with one half hanging from his shoulders. The Elector inquiring what he meant by so strange an act, Klaus replied, “If you treat with the foe, you will soon look as ridiculous with half your dominions as I do with half a cloak.”
The unbridled language of the Court fool was oftentimes as amazing as it was insulting; for when one morning Philip, Landgrave of Baden, complained of a headache to his fool Peter after a drinking bout, and asked him his remedy, the latter replied, “Drink again to-day.” “Then I shall only suffer more to-morrow,” added the Prince. “Then,” rejoined Peter, “you must drink still more.” “But how would such a remedy end?” asked the Landgrave. “Why,” said Peter, “in your being a bigger fool than I am.”
And, as Dr. Doran tells us, the qualifications for a Court fool were extraordinary, as may be gathered from the following incident. A cowherd, Conrad Pocher, was once sent afield with a sickly boy to{319} attend him, when, out of compassion, he hung him to the branch of a tree. He was tried for murder, but defended himself with such humour—arguing that he had greatly helped the little cow-boy—that Philip the Upright, Elector Palatine, made him official jester. Another cowherd who gained a similar distinction was Clause Hintze, Court fool to Duke John Frederick of Stettin, who so gained his patron’s favour as to be made by him lord of the village of Butterdorf. One of his successors was Hans Miesko, a wretched imbecile, but who was specially honoured at his death by a funeral sermon being preached over him.
And among those who were fools in a non-professional capacity may be mentioned the celebrated Baron von Gundling at the Court of Frederick William I., and also David Fassman, who, for losing a key entrusted to him by Frederick, was condemned to carry a heavy wooden one an ell long round his neck for several days. Incidents of this kind, as Dr. Doran observes, makes it difficult to decide which was the greater fool, it being “inconceivable that reasonable creatures should be guilty of the absurd follies attributed to them.” One day Frederick II. commissioned Baron von Poelnitz to procure a pair of turkeys. These he sent with the message, “Here are the turkeys, sire.” Annoyed at the style of note, Frederick ordered the leanest ox that could be found to be decked ridiculously with flowers, and the horns to be gilded, after which the animal was tied up in front of the Baron’s house, with this inscription: “Here is the ox, Poelnitz.{320}”
Many of the French kings had their fools, and in the Court accounts for 1404 we find an entry of forty-seven pairs of shoes for Hancelin Coc, fool of Charles VI. And when the fleet of Philip was destroyed by that of Edward III., no one except a Court fool had the courage to tell the King. Going into the royal chamber, he kept muttering “Those cowardly Englishmen! The chicken-hearted Britons!”
“How so, cousin?” asked Philip, “how so?”
“Why, because they have not courage enough to jump into the sea like your French sailors, who went headlong over from their ships, leaving those to the enemy, who did not care to follow them!”—by which artful means the King learnt his defeat.
Louis XI. took into his service the fool of his deceased brother Charles, Duke de Guyenne; and amongst the many amusing anecdotes told of the famous “Le Glorieux,” fool to Charles the Bold, who used to compare himself with Hannibal, it is related how, after the overthrow at Granson, as the two were riding in search of safety, Le Glorieux exclaimed to Charles, “This is the prettiest way of being like Hannibal that I ever saw.”
With Francis I. are associated two of the most famous fools—Caillette and Triboulet—to whom all kinds of good stories have been attributed. Thus one day, when the latter complained to Francis that a nobleman had threatened his life for some impertinent lie, the King exclaimed, “If he does I will hang him a quarter of an hour afterwards.{321}”
“Ah, sire!” replied Triboulet, “couldn’t you contrive to hang him a quarter of an hour previously?”
On the death of the Duke of Orleans, Henry II. raised his fool Thony to the rank of patented buffoon; and a personage who, without being a professional fool, was the source of much merriment at Henry’s Court, was Mendoza. It appears that Henry celebrated the obsequies of his predecessor in a grand manner, and, when the priest in his funeral oration asserted that the soul of King Francis had gone to Paradise without passing through Purgatory, he was accused of heresy. But Mendoza, then a chief officer of the Court, by a witty speech turned into a humorous ending what might have been just the reverse, remarking, “Gentlemen, if you had known the good King Francis as well as I did, you would better have understood the words of the preacher. Francis was not a man to tarry long anywhere; and if he did take a turn in Purgatory, believe me, the devil himself could not persuade him to make anything like a sojourn”—words which were greeted with general laughter.
A jester to three kings—Henry II., Francis II., and Charles IX.—was Brusquet, originally, as some say, a hard-up lawyer, and, according to others, a quack doctor. By his wit he managed to gain Court favour, being made by Henry Posting-Master-General of Paris. When on a visit to Flanders at the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, Brusquet met the ex-Emperor Charles V., who, recognising him, said,{322} “Brusquet, do you remember the day when the Constable de Montmorency wanted to have you hanged?” “Right well do I remember it,” he replied. “It was the day on which your Majesty purchased those splendid rubies and carbuncles which now adorn your imperial hand”—alluding to the inflamed gouty swellings which disfigured the Emperor’s fingers. Philip II. of Spain was so delighted with Brusquet that he sent his own fool to France to learn wit from associating with him; and during this visit Brusquet seems to have used every opportunity for imposing on and cheating him. But Brusquet in turn met his match in Strozzi, the son of a Princess de Medicis, his great antagonist, to whom he probably owed his fall in 1562, when he was obliged to fly, accused of being a Huguenot, and of suppressing despatches which contained news unfavourable to the Huguenot cause.
A noted fool of Henri III. was Chicot, who, indeed, was not only his jester but his friend, and, according to Dumas, his protector. In the same capacity he entered the service of Henri IV.; and it was his bravery at the siege of Rouen that cost him his life. It appears that he made Henri of Lorraine, Count of Chaligny, prisoner, and leading him to the King, said, “Here I make you a present of the Count, keep what I took and now give you!” So enraged was the Count at being captured by a Court fool that he gave Chicot a violent blow on the head with the hilt of his sword, from the effects of which he died.{323}
Jeanne, Queen of Charles I. of France, maintained a female fool named Artaude du Puy.
At the Court of Henri IV. there was a Mathurine who held the office of female fool for the amusement of the Court, and who is said to have employed her wit in laughing people out of the Huguenot faith into Roman Catholicism. But this sort of foolery almost cost her her life. It seems she was present in 1594 when Jean Chastel wounded the King, and almost shared the fate of the would-be assassin. Henri, well aware of her zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, and that she only regarded him as half a Romanist, ordered her arrest as an accomplice, but she proved her innocence, and was set free.
Much merriment was caused at the Court of Louis XIII. by Maret, who imitated the Gascon twang of Gascon nobles; and with Louis XIV. we come to the last of the official jesters, L’Angeli, originally a stable-boy, and whose memory has been thus immortalised by Boileau:—
“Un poête à la cour fut ............