Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

KNIGHT
Knights awaiting the start
of a judicial combat.
(The Danish Royal Library)
82
Germany, using the family's wealth and resources to do so. He went on to become a
master in his own right, and lists a number of his pupils, all of whom were knights or
squires, and the duels they had fought and won. He claims to have been a student and
teacher of martial arts for 40 years, and had fought five duels in protection of his own
honour by the time he settled down in around 1409 to write and illustrate his F/i\<
Duellorum at the request of the Marquis of Ferrare, Nicolo III d'Este.
Whilst these men were performing a very similar service to that performed by
William Marshal in the Young King's familia, training their employers in the martial
arts, theirs was a very different relationship. Unlike Marshal, who was a mentor and
comrade to princes and kings, these men appear to have had a much more professional
outlook and a much more specific remit within court circles. Many of them seem to have
been employed to fight as champions in the judicial combats that were still an integral
part of the legal system of the lands of the region. Talhoffer certainly served as an umpire
in such duels fought in Zurich in the 1450s. The focus of the manuals such men produced
is invariably single combat against an opponent equipped in the same manner as the
reader. Talhoffer's book makes this very clear. He begins his work by outhnrng the seven