French Castles

They call it a sport, personally I call it torture. Watching jousting tournaments in French castles would not have been my idea of fun. It was a very popular sport from the middle ages up until the early 1600s.

Though I do find reading about it very interesting. The French King Henry II had a mistress called Diane de Poitiers when he was only 15, she was 35 years of age. 25 years later on his death bed, which came from jousting, he still called for his mistress, but the queen was having none of it, The cause of his death was not as horrific as I thought but needless to say still a very painful one, when a broken shard of his opponents lance went through his visor and into his eye. "Ouch!"

Then we have what I do find more interesting in the jousting world, the horses. They used two types of horses for the sport, warm blooded chargers and cold blooded destriers. Chargers were medium weight horses trained for there agility and stamina. The destriers were larger, heavier and slower, but giving devastating force to the riders lance through its weight, being about twice the size of the average horse. The horses during tournaments had their heads protected by a chanfron which is a iron shield to protect them from the lance.

Then there were the weapons that were used in the tournaments, which to me were quite brutal, tilting with the lance to knock them off their horse, then there was blows with the battle axe and then strokes with the daggers or swords. Many knights made there fortune in these events, while just as many of them lost there lives to.

Hope you find this French castles history snippet as interesting as I did.