THE FEUDAL SYSTEM                      77

Manners of the Knights,—The noblemen of the Mid-
dle Ages were not distinguished from the peasants,
either by their polite manners or by their education.
The greater part could not read; they did nothing but
drink, eat, hunt, and fight; they were usually brutal
and violent, often ferocious. Richard Coeur de Lion,
the model of knighthood, massacred 2,500 Saracen
prisoners. In a war with Philip Augustus he ordered
that fifteen knightly prisoners should have their eyes
put out, then he sent them to the King of France,
giving to them as a guide one of their number who had
lost but one eye. Philip Augustus, in response, put
out the eyes of fifteen knights whom he had taken
from Richard, and sent them back to their master under
the guidance of a woman; "so that," says his pane-
gyrist, "no one could think him inferior to Richard in
courage and in strength, or believe that he was afraid
of him/' In 1119 a great Norman lord, Eustache de
Bertrail, son-in-law of the King of England, ordered
the eyes of one of his hostages put out; a nobleman,
the father of the victim, caused the daughters of
Eustache to be delivered to him by their grandfather,
put out their eyes and cut off their noses. These acts
of savage violence were still frequent in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries.

This adventurous life rendered the knights fero-
cious ; but it gave them some virtues demanded by war:
it made them courageous and proud. The accom-
plished knight of whom poets sang, and whom all
wished to imitate, was the "preux," or the "prud-
Tiomme," When a knight was armed he was ad-
dressed; "Be preux" (valiant). The "preux" is a