VALOR: NOBLES ANSWER NASCENT CAPITALISTS

WARRIORS SPRING UP IN FRENCH ART WHEN CAPITALISM ACCELERATES AND AND POTENTIAL CHALLENGERS SPRING UP

(TOWARD 1500)

Society is legally separated into three estates. The first, the clergy, pray. The third, commoners, work. And the second, nobles to protect, that is, fight. So warfare and valor are glorified.*

*For other ways in which they dominate, please click.

• Roman attire idealizes even mercenaries: 

Soldiers' Pay (detail), tapestry, Château d'Ecouen (Renaissance Museum), museum publication 

• The shield-wielding combattant hovers over a château chimney, the dominant spot in a salon that was impossible to heat:

Claude Abron

• The ideal this horseman expresses has no monetary goal:

Château d'Ecouen, museum publication

Duelling appears at the same time. One throws away one's life as one does one's wealth, with panache: 

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Thédore Cahu, 1903

Valor affirms nobles' superiority
over the prosaic, penny-pinching... 
and ascendant middle class.

*     *     * 

Next,

 Did memory of feudal valor 

add to the carnage of World War I?