3.2.3. VALOR: NOBLES REACT TO NASCENT CAPITALISTS

WHEN EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES LED TO A CAPITALISM THAT WAS MUCH MORE DYNAMIC, NOBLES FOUND NEW WAYS TO SHOW THEMSELVES SUPERIOR  

(FROM ABOUT 1500)

One was to associate themselves with heroes of mythology and antiquity. Another stressed their martial valor.*

*Fighting was their God-given function in a society where the population into three legal categories: the clergy to pray, commoners to work and nobles to fight.

They alone had the means to own horses and their battlefield exploits alone were considered heroic...

 A battle of the Spanish Reconquista, 1405 (painting a decade later) / zoom

The heroes are a king and a Crusader, backed by horsemen, who are nobles by definition. Helmets identify a line of foot soldiers, whose faces are not shown (as was the case for humble combattants generally. The faces of ordinary fighters do not appear until those at top of the Arc de Triomphe, which are deliberately hard-to-see).

They wear armor for their portraits:

Portrait of a Young General by Anthony van Dyck, 1624

The Count of Vaudreuil by François-Hubert Drouais, 1758 / zoom (the map is of Saint-Domingue, where he was a plantation owner and governor).

A combattant proudly brandishes his weapons over a château chimney, the most prestigious spot in a glacial salon:  

A salon of the Renaissance Museum / Claude Abron

The ideal this warrior expresses has nothing to do with tangible goals: 

Château d'Ecouen, museum publication

*    *

Dueling appears at the same time as emphasis on antiquity and valor. One throws away one's life as one does one's wealth, with panache: 

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Thédore Cahu, 1903

*     *

So nobles affirmed their superiority
over the prosaic, penny-pinching... 
and ascendant middle class.

*     *     * 

Next,

3.2.4. 

Did memory of feudal valor add to the carnage of World War I?